How good has Kentucky been compared to the rest of college basketball amid banner drought?

It has been nine years since a new blue banner has been raised into the Rupp Arena rafters.

Not coincidentally, it has also been nine years since Kentucky earned a 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

A college basketball team doesn’t have to reach that level of the season’s elite to make it to the Final Four and contend for a national championship, obviously. Last year’s March Madness — with 4-seeded UConn winning it all amid a bracket of upsets — proved that once again.

But 1 seeds are 1 seeds for a reason. They represent the best of the sport, and they have the greatest chance to make it to college basketball’s final weekend. The history of the tournament makes that pretty clear.

Kentucky, a program so accustomed to being in that discussion, hasn’t earned a 1 seed since the Wildcats started the 2015 NCAA Tournament with a 34-0 record. That skid — now the longest in UK basketball history — will continue for at least one more year, with this Selection Sunday guaranteed to place the Cats somewhere other than a top spot in their region.

John Calipari has talked about how difficult it is to reach that status by the end of a season, especially with the younger rosters he typically builds. Only four teams get a 1 seed, after all.

But, for all the talk of parity in college basketball and the narrative that any team can rise to the top in any given season, other elite programs have often found themselves on that No. 1 seed line during Kentucky’s drought.

Chasing the 1 seeds

This will mark the eighth NCAA Tournament in a row without a 1 seed for Kentucky.

The NCAA Tournament seeding process was introduced in 1978, and the following year’s March Madness was the first to seed every team in the field. Since then, the Wildcats have been a 1 seed on 12 occasions.

Before the current skid, the longest streak without a 1 seed for Kentucky stretched from Eddie Sutton’s first season in 1986 to Rick Pitino’s first 1 seed in 1993. (This is also UK’s second-longest streak without a Final Four, with only the drought from Tubby Smith’s 1998 title to Calipari’s 2011 run lasting longer.)

In the past seven tournaments since UK last earned a 1 seed, 15 programs have managed to do it. And that number will grow by at least one when UConn gets its expected 1 seed Sunday.

Also in that span, six programs have earned a 1 seed more than once. Kansas leads the way with five. Gonzaga has done it four times. North Carolina and Virginia have three each. Baylor and Villanova have two. And that doesn’t include the 2020 tournament that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That year, Kansas was viewed as a 1 seed and the favorite to win the title, which would have given them an amazing six 1 seeds in eight years. Baylor and Gonzaga were also projected as 1 seeds.

Houston and Purdue are likely to join this group of six when the brackets are revealed Sunday. It’s expected to be back-to-back seasons as 1 seeds for both of those schools.

So, obviously, maintaining a presence in that 1 seed discussion can be done. Kentucky just hasn’t been doing it.

Building a 1 seed

What gives a team the best chance at a 1 seed in the current state of college basketball? Consistent winning, obviously. Talent, of course. But roster continuity is also a shared factor among just about every 1 seed over the past several years, and that’s been something that Kentucky has often lacked in the Calipari era of one-and-done players.

With very few exceptions, a look at the rosters of the 28 teams that earned a 1 seed over the previous seven tournaments — as well as those expected to be 1 seeds this year — shows a clear trend. The biggest group of contributors on those rosters are typically populated by a majority of players who are A) upperclassmen, and B) players who have started their college careers with that team and/or been in the program for multiple seasons.

Those trends are even more striking when you look at the 1 seeds that have ultimately won NCAA titles, which has been the case in six of the past eight tournaments and five straight from 2017 through 2022. Those five most recent teams that won titles as 1 seeds:

▪ North Carolina (2017): Six of the top nine players were upperclassmen, and eight of the top nine had been in the program the previous season. The only exception was a freshman.

▪ Villanova (2018): Five of the top six players had been with the team the previous season, and four of those players were upperclassmen.

▪ Virginia (2019): This team primarily played six guys in the NCAA title game. Four were in their third season of college ball (all with Virginia), one was a freshman, and the other was a first-year transfer.

▪ Baylor (2021): This team, which won the title in the COVID bubble, was held up as a crowning achievement of working the transfer market, but all eight of the Bears’ top players had been on Baylor’s campus the previous season, most started their college careers with the school, and six of the eight were upperclassmen. None were freshmen. These were the only eight who played in the NCAA title game before coach Scott Drew emptied his bench at the end.

▪ Kansas (2022): The top four players on this team — and six of the top seven — had all been on KU’s campus for at least three years by the end of the 2021-22 season.

And even last year’s UConn team, which won the NCAA title as a 4 seed, had plenty of experience together. Of the top six players on that squad, one was a first-year freshman, one was a first-year transfer, but the other four had been with the Huskies for their entire college careers.

Kentucky, even with its most experienced rosters, hasn’t come close to that kind of continuity.

Kentucky’s rosters

This season’s UK roster, of course, is composed of almost entirely new faces.

Five of the top six players, in terms of minutes played, are first-year Wildcats, a group that includes an incoming transfer (Tre Mitchell) and four freshmen (Rob Dillingham, Justin Edwards, Reed Sheppard and D.J. Wagner). The exception is Antonio Reeves, who is in his second season with the Cats after playing the three previous years at Illinois State.

On last season’s UK team, three of the top five Wildcats were in their first year with the program. The other two (Oscar Tshiebwe and Jacob Toppin) began their college careers elsewhere. And the biggest contributor that wasn’t either a freshman or a transfer was Lance Ware.

The year before that, the Cats featured a roster in which four of the top five players were in their first season playing with the team. Among the top nine players, Keion Brooks Jr. was the only one that wasn’t a freshman or a transfer. That team achieved a 2 seed — the third time since 2015 that UK has done that — but that team also lost in the first round of March Madness.

Next season is likely to feature a similarly inexperienced roster, as far as players who have played at Kentucky and know Calipari’s approach. Mitchell and Reeves will be gone. Most of the freshmen are expected to move on, too. Adou Thiero and Ugonna Onyenso — if they return — would be the longest-tenured Wildcats. Both are still 19 years old.

So the 2024-25 roster is certain to feature several new freshmen, a handful (at best) of young returnees, and a small number of transfers who will be playing in their first season at UK.

That will, once again, put the Cats on the opposite spectrum of what a 1 seed looks like.

It doesn’t mean a 1 seed will be impossible for that Kentucky team.

Those in search of an outlier can find a recent one: Last season’s Alabama squad — the No. 1 overall seed in the 2023 NCAA Tournament — featured a similarly inexperienced roster. The Tide’s top three players were a couple of freshmen and a first-year transfer. The rest of the top seven featured a transfer in his third season at Bama, a sophomore, and two more freshmen.

So, anything’s possible. But it’s improbable to achieve a 1 seed with that kind of team. And while plenty of non-1 seeds get to the Final Four, the teams that are the best during the season are the teams most likely to be playing that long into the tournament. Twelve of the past 16 national champions — the ultimate measuring stick for Kentucky teams — have been 1 seeds.

Maybe this UK squad will end the Final Four skid and make a run at the title. Perhaps the next one will find lightning in a bottle and put together a regular season like Alabama did last year.

But this will be one more Selection Sunday without Kentucky’s name at the top of a bracket.

Sunday

NCAA Selection Show

When: 6 p.m.

TV: CBS-27

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