Kentucky is the most overrated basketball program in the last decade, apparently.

Sorry, Cats fans, but we're the most overrated basketball program of the last decade according to Jason Lisk of The Big Lead, a blog hosted by USA Today Sports. Yesterday, Lisk posted this article, which ranked the the ten most overrated college basketball programs since the 2007-2008 season, according to him. Kentucky took the top honor of most overrated, followed directly by Connecticut and North Carolina. Lisk arrived at his conclusion by comparing pre and end-of-season AP Top 25 polls from the past nine seasons. From these AP poll comparisons, he derived a point system to determine which program was the most overrated. Yeah, I'm not really sure how to explain the system because, um, well nevermind, here, just try to see if this makes sense to you.

"To come up with this list, I looked at the preseason Top 25 list, and the end-of-season list, and compared them. (If a team was unranked at the beginning of the season, they were assigned a ranking of 38, and if unranked at end of season, assigned a ranking equal to their seed value—or a 50 if missed the tournament)."

I could be dumb, but I have read the excerpt close to 20 times now and this ranking system still remains about as clear as mud. I'm not sure why he chose to assign 38 to the unranked preseason teams, but sure, we'll go with that. Next, it's not clear if by "end of season" he means the regular season or postseason, so I just assumed postseason. Then he states, that teams are assigned a ranking equal to their seed value if they end the season unranked. Well, seed value and AP ranking aren't the same thing, but again, I went with it and just assumed if a team was the second 7-seed, then their "ranking" was 26. Then, again, he pulls 50 out of nowhere to assign to teams who missed the NCAA Tournament. Using this system, Lisk determined the Cats to be the champ with -106 points. I went back and looked through the past nine pre and postseason AP Polls to make sure I understood the system. I charted my best understanding. Yeah I still don't get it. But, I'm not very smart. I'm also confused as to why he decided to exclude the 2016-2017 season. Here is what he said about Kentucky in the article:

"The Kentucky Wildcats have been ranked in the preseason Top 4 in seven of the last eight years. They’ve finished there in only three of those seasons. Add in an 18-13 season when Billy Gillespie was coach in 2008, after starting as preseason #20; missing the tournament in 2013, after being ranked 3rd; and dropping to an 8 seed (but then advancing to the championship game) after being preseason #1 in 2014, and no team has underperformed in so many years. Compare that to fellow Bluebloods Kansas and Duke, who do not make this list. Kansas has been ranked in the preseason every year in the last decade, with an average ranking of 7.3, and yet has finished with an average ranking of 5.5. For Duke, it’s 5.9 preseason average and 7.0 end of season. Both have finished Top 10 in nine of 10 years"

In short, according to Lisk, a teams ranking (an arbitrary number decided on by our nation's brightest minds, sports journalists), before the season starts and after the season ends, is the ONLY thing that matters in determining a program's legitimacy. Seems like a thoroughly analyzed, nuanced way of looking at things to me. Jeez. Alright. Lisk is right, Kentucky has been really overrated over the past decade...according to his system. But look closer at Kentucky's data derived from Lisk's system. It's a system that draws conclusions through +/- sum of all the past season's two sets of rankings. So obviously, a wider variation in pre and postseason rankings will ultimately lead to a larger total. This is the reason why Lisk's system is colossally inaccurate. Let's look at the Calipari era. Notice, Kentucky's preseason rank under Cal has been consistently in the top-5 with exception to 2011. The postseason rank on the other hand is all over the place. Mine and Lisk's numbers are a little different, regardless, this chart illustrates how horrible this system is. Lisk's "final point total" was a -106 difference in rankings. Over 70% of that total comes from 2013 and 2014 alone. This system also lacks context. The 2010 season was the start of the "one and done" era and Kentucky is the "one and done" poster child. Cal has started off each season (that's listed) with a new top recruiting class. This gives context as to why Kentucky's preseason ranking is always so high. When you consistently start the season with a new group of the country's top talent, voters have no choice but rank Kentucky high in the polls. They have nothing else to go by. However, these players are freshmen, so sometimes it works out and other times it does not. When it doesn't, you get years like 2013 and 2014, when they fall way back in the rankings and then a blogger invents a phony system, that relies heavily on those off years, to wrongly conclude that your team isn't legitimate. Context, my friends. In this modern age of analytics, the AP Top 25 is not the best way of determining a team's strength. The Cats have finished in the top 10 of the Kenpom rankings - a system with adjusted statistics based on a variety of factors - five of the last nine seasons, all under Calipari. Not to mention, in those nine seasons, the Cats went to five Elite Eights and four Final Fours, in addition to a National Championship and National runner-up. That's pretty decent. Yes, Kentucky has had a few seasons in which they were ranked too high to start the season, but this is largely why preseason polls are absolutely useless. However, giving UK the title as "most overrated team of the last decade" is a huge stretch, and perhaps just a way to get suckers like me all worked up to the point I write 1000 words saying why it's wrong. So, Jason Lisk of The Big Lead dot com, if that was your motivation, then I'll hand it to you, you won. Just come up with a better reason next time, you rascal you.