Bracketology: Kentucky straddling No. 3/4 seed line entering big week

It’s Tuesday, which means Joe Lunardi’s got a new bracket for us to yell about over at ESPN.com. After the loss to South Carolina last week, Kentucky dropped from a No. 3 seed to a No. 4 seed in Lunardi’s NCAA Tournament projections. The Cats remain a No. 4 seed in today’s update, which places them in the West Region with No. 1 seed North Carolina, playing opening rounds in Salt Lake City. I’m not scared of UNC, but no thanks to all that West Coast travel.

Kentucky is firmly on the No. 4 seed line per Lunardi, who ranks the Cats No. 15 overall, just ahead of Auburn. Tennessee is his No. 5 overall team, and Lunardi says he’ll move the Vols up to a No. 1 seed if North Carolina loses to Georgia Tech and Tennessee takes care of business vs. South Carolina.

Lunardi is just one of many bracketologists, of course. Jerry Palm has the Cats on the No. 3 seed line in his latest projections for CBS Sports. Kentucky is in the Midwest Region with No. 1 seed Purdue, No. 2 seed Marquette, and No. 4 seed Duke. The Cats are Palm’s No. 10 overall team.

Kentucky’s average seed on Bracket Matrix, which aggregates all of the NCAA Tournament projections on the internet, is 3.8, so the Cats really are straddling that No. 3/No. 4 seed line. As you’ve heard us say time and time again, opportunities to move up are ahead, with five Quad 1 games remaining on the schedule. Tomorrow’s game vs. Florida — a bubble team in most projections — is in Quad 2, while Saturday’s game vs. Tennessee sits atop Quad 1. The Vols are currently No. 4 in the NET Rankings.

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Matt Norlander: No. 44 is the magic number for Kentucky’s defense

Elsewhere on CBS Sports, Kentucky is the leading topic of Matt Norlander’s insider notebook, the Court Report. Norlander sums up what we’ve all come to accept over the past month: for Kentucky to be a serious title contender, the defense must get better. Saturday’s performance at Arkansas was a promising step. After the gritty road win, Kentucky moved from No. 96 to No. 70 in KenPom‘s adjusted defensive efficiency, a substantial leap.

As Jacob Polacheck outlined last week, the last 13 national champions have all ranked at least in the top 22 in KenPom defensive efficiency; Kentucky is very much outside of that at No. 70. When you take out the six games of the NCAA Tournament, the range gets a little wider. Per Norlander, since KenPom began tracking the metric in the 1996-97 season, the lowest-ranked defense at the start of the tournament was 2020-21 Baylor, at No. 44.

If you focus on just making the Final Four, things look even rosier.

For the 104 Final Four teams since 1997, the average AdjDE is 21.88 — with a variety of outliers. If Kentucky fans aching to merely get back to their first Final Four since 2015 are setting THAT as the bar, I’ve got good news. Nine teams in the past 26 tournaments have made the Final Four ranked 50th or worse in adjusted defensive efficiency, with five of those teams ranked between 80th and 132nd. You can be unexceptional on defense for four months and still pull it together to make the Final Four. 

Matt Norlander

Our own Brandon Ramsey also gets a shoutout in Norlander’s notebook for his number-crunching on AP Top 10 teams losing on the road at a historic rate, so head on over to CBS Sports for more good stuff.