Way-too-early college basketball rankings for 2023-24 season are here. Where is Kentucky?

Kentucky has won just one NCAA Tournament game in the past three editions of March Madness and the players expected to headline the Wildcats’ next roster have played exactly zero minutes of college basketball.

That isn’t doing much to temper the national expectations around UK’s 2023-24 season.

With UConn defeating San Diego State to win the 2023 title Monday night, attention is already turning to next season, and most of the major national outlets are once again pegging Kentucky as one of the early favorites.

While UK is likely to add from the transfer portal this spring, the 2023-24 campaign is expected to be driven by John Calipari’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class, a group that features McDonald’s All-American freshmen Aaron Bradshaw, Justin Edwards, Reed Sheppard and DJ Wagner, as well as top-10 national prospect Rob Dillingham — five elite recruits that will be greeted in Lexington with through-the-roof expectations.

Most of this past season’s top contributors are expected to be gone, with Cason Wallace, Jacob Toppin and Sahvir Wheeler already announcing their departures, Oscar Tshiebwe expected to do the same soon, and Chris Livingston, Antonio Reeves and CJ Fredrick still question marks.

But a mostly new UK team will be met with the same old preseason hype.

Shortly after UConn won the NCAA title Monday night, BetOnline.ag released odds for the 2024 championship that showed Kentucky as the early favorite at 11-1, followed by Duke and Purdue at 12-1, UConn at 14-1, and Kansas and Marquette at 16-1.

Many of the national college basketball websites also have UK toward the top of their lists.

ESPN ranks the Cats at No. 4 in its “way-too-early” top 25, behind only UConn, Marquette and Duke. Those rankings also include a projected starting lineup of Dillingham, Wagner, Edwards, Livingston and Bradshaw — a prediction that Livingston will return for a sophomore season.

The Sporting News puts the Wildcats at No. 6 in its early preseason rankings, while Sports Illustrated has Kentucky at No. 8 and HeatCheckCBB.com ranks UK at No. 9 nationally.

Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News notes the dilemma with ranking Kentucky this early.

“UK almost always is among the most difficult teams to project in advance of the season, because so much of the team’s potential is in the hands of high school prospects who have yet to compete in the college game,” he wrote. “And that’s become more complicated by the presence of ‘super seniors’ in so many places who exacerbate the differential between the youngest and most experienced players in the college game.”

A few of the other preseason lists aren’t quite as confident in the Cats for next season.

Jeff Goodman of WatchStadium.com places Kentucky at No. 10 nationally, The Washington Post ranks UK at No. 11 in its early top 25 and CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish has Kentucky at No. 13 in the country, even though Parrish is projecting that Tshiebwe will return for a third season with the Wildcats and Goodman writes that fans shouldn’t be surprised if the UK star comes back for the Cats.

“It’s a roster that could give John Calipari a realistic chance to return to the Final Four for the first time since 2015,” Parrish says.

Fox Sports has UK at No. 17, also noting that it’s more difficult to win with younger players in the current college basketball climate.

247Sports doesn’t rank Kentucky at all in its initial top 25 for the 2023-24 season, noting the strength of UK’s recruiting class and the possible returns of Fredrick and Reeves but wanting to see more from the Wildcats’ roster.

“Kentucky will need to land some haymakers in the portal for more proven players,” 247Sports’ Kevin Flaherty writes.

Alabama, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Tennessee are the other Southeastern Conference teams on all or most of those lists, with Auburn and Mississippi State getting some mentions, too.

These preseason projections will obviously change over the course of the spring and summer as rosters across the country solidify and high-profile players make their stay-or-go decisions.

It’s also important to note that Kentucky is a perennial pick at the top of these “way-too-early” preseason lists despite a recent run of poor postseason results. The Cats missed the NCAA Tournament with the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class in 2020-21, then got bounced in the first round last year and made it only to the second round of this past season’s NCAA Tournament.

UK started the 2022-23 campaign at No. 4 in the AP Top 25 rankings, fell out of the poll by the eighth week of the season and was unranked going into the NCAA Tournament. The Cats were ranked No. 10 in the AP poll going into both the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons.

In an appearance at the Final Four in Houston over the weekend, Calipari said that he hadn’t been very active with the transfer portal yet as he continues to get a feel for what his current players might do this offseason. He pointed out that Toppin and Wallace had already declared for the NBA Draft and would not return to UK, alluding to more departures coming soon.

“Oscar will be putting his name in the draft, maybe staying. Chris — well, we got a bunch of guys that will probably put their name in,” he said. “So I gotta kind of weed through that to figure out, first, who we have coming back.”

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