Kentucky within striking distance of No. 2 seed in latest Bracketology

Kentucky is a consensus No. 3 seed in NCAA Tournament projections five days before Selection Sunday. Joe Lunardi even has the Cats within striking distance of a No. 2 seed, predicting that Mark Pope’s first Kentucky squad will exorcise some of the program’s recent March demons.

Kentucky is the top No. 3 seed in Lunardi’s Bracketology update this morning. The Cats are the No. 9 team overall, up two spots from Sunday. That puts them in the West Region with No. 1 seed Florida, No. 2 seed Texas Tech, and No. 4 seed Purdue. In this hypothetical bracket. Kentucky opens play in Denver vs. No. 14 seed Utah Valley, the school where Mark Pope got his first head coaching job. The winner would face No. 6 UCLA or No. 11 VCU for the chance to go to San Francisco.

Lunardi even gives Kentucky a shoutout in his ESPN.com writeup, calling the Cats “overachievers” and calling for them to make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.

“It’s not easy to fly under the radar at Kentucky. Yet Mark Pope has done so in the first year at his alma mater. For the first time in forever, the Wildcats are being called overachievers. Even though they won fewer conference games than the past three seasons under John Calipari. Even though they don’t have an All-SEC first-team player. What the Wildcats do have is hope, because a 21-10 (10-8 conference) record is good enough for a 3-seed out of the loaded SEC. And that kind of tournament placement, backed up by a whopping 10 Quad 1 wins, suggests Big Blue Nation should see the NCAA second weekend for the first time since before the pandemic. It hasn’t happened yet, but the ghosts of St. Peter’s, Oakland, and other recent demons should be buried soon.”

To reach the No. 2 seed line, Kentucky needs a strong run at the SEC Tournament. As I outlined yesterday, the Cats could add up to four more Quad 1 wins to its total of 10 in Nashville. Lunardi says that Auburn will lock up the No. 1 overall seed if it wins on Friday, while Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee will all be battling for the fourth No. 1 seed (Duke and Houston have the other two). If Kentucky wins on Thursday night, a victory over Alabama on Friday night would be a big resume booster, as would anything beyond that (although we’ve learned the hard way that the Selection Committee doesn’t really factor in Sunday and even Saturday results).

Here is how Kentucky’s current resume stacks up with other teams in their range, via Bracketologists. Kentucky and Texas A&M can add the most to their resumes since the SEC is stacked. The Aggies are the No. 5 seed in the top half of the bracket in Nashville and could add four more Quad 1 wins too.

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