John Calipari says Kentucky still has chances to beef up resume

Despite a demoralizing loss to Georgia where all hope appears to be waning, Kentucky is still going to have opportunities to make the upcoming NCAA Tournament — at least in theory they will.

Kentucky came into Saturday’s game against the Bulldogs just barely projected to make the field of 68, according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, who stated hours before tipoff that UK would “drop completely out of the projected NCAA field” if the program suffered another loss. That line was parrotted throughout the entire broadcast, too, and it ultimately came to fruition. It’s tough to see how, if the season were to end today, Kentucky would make the NCAA Tournament with its current resume: just one Quad 1 win (1-7) and now two terrible-looking losses to SEC bottom-feeders Georgia and South Carolina.

Following the aftermath of what happened in Athens, Kentucky now sits on a 16-9 overall record with a 7-5 mark in SEC play. The ‘Cats still have a chance to earn a top-four seed (and the double-bye that comes with it) in the conference tournament with how crowded the middle of the league is, but wins need to be stacked. If there’s anything “positive” to take away from Saturday’s loss, it’s that Kentucky still has opportunities to beef up its mediocre resume.

“Here’s what’s great. We got the kind of schedule that — let’s go win games and we’ll be fine. Just gonna have to go win games,” Head coach John Calipari said after falling to Georgia. “There are games that we’re playing against teams that you beat those teams, you’re fine. Whether we’re healthy or not we’re gonna have to go at those teams and those are gonna be important games for us. But we have them, it’s not like we don’t have any other chances to go get this right.”

Kentucky certainly does have plenty of chances left on the schedule to work back into the projected field, but with the team’s current trajectory, changes will likely be necessary. Of the six games left in the regular season, UK is only favored by KenPom and BartTorvik in two of them — at home against Auburn and Vanderbilt. A 2-4 finish to the season would destroy any hopes of making the NCAA Tournament. Honestly, anything short of a 5-1 finish would likely keep the ‘Cats from dancing in March, and even then it could be a close call.

It doesn’t help (well, technically it does) that Kentucky has four more Quad 1 opponents remaining. The last couple of weeks hasn’t exactly instilled confidence that this group can go out and steal some of those victories against the likes of No. 6 Tennessee or Arkansas on the road. But if you’re looking for a sliver of hope, it’s that there will be enough games out there for Kentucky to craft a tournament-caliber resume.

“We have all kinds of games that we can go do what we need to do,” Calipari said. “We got teams in the top 20, top 30 coming in, top 10. We got our chance to do whatever we choose to do.”

“We got six games left in the regular season,” Kentucky center Oscar Tshiebwe said postgame. “I believe in this team, we’re gonna keep fighting, and we gotta get a win. The rest of the six games we gotta win and be ready for the tournament.”

At this point, every game the rest of the way will be viewed as a must-win for the Wildcats.