The SEC Availability Report stopped you in your tracks ahead of Kentucky‘s conference opener at Alabama, something that felt impossible for these Wildcats knowing their early injury luck. Key contributors were in and out all season with Jaland Lowe‘s shoulder seemingly hanging on by a thread and Jayden Quaintance waiting to make his anticipated debut coming off knee surgery. They were holding everything together with duct tape and prayers until the full roster could be healthy and available, and that finally became a reality in Tuscaloosa after a small taste in the second half against St. John’s.
We got a talking-to from Rick Pitino after that double-digit comeback win against the Johnnies in Atlanta, Mark Pope‘s old college coach saying the media was too quick to judge Kentucky without seeing the complete product. How dare we criticize these players or the coaching for taking a couple of blowout losses against big-name competition?
“I think you all need to learn a little bit of a lesson as writers because you’re expecting Kentucky to be this great basketball team with all those injuries,” he said.
To his credit, along with these players and coaches, it’s technically true. It was a puzzle missing key corner and middle pieces — you couldn’t see the vision without them. I’ll never excuse bad effort and no heart like we saw on multiple occasions in the non-conference, but I can hear an argument on roster construction gripes and some of the grandiose takeaways. They earned the benefit of the doubt by playing like their asses were on fire at full strength in those 20 minutes against the Johnnies, followed by a 14-day holiday break between high-major opponents with all of the practice time in the world to build chemistry and install whatever you wanted on both ends to maximize that clean bill of health for the very first time as a full unit.
It’s why I actually felt confident Kentucky was going to walk into Coleman Coliseum and leave with a victory, maybe comfortably, despite the numbers and analytics laughing at that blind hope. Bart Torvik predicted an 11-point win for Nate Oats and the Tide while giving the Wildcats a 20 percent chance to pull it off! If you simply stayed within a handful of perimeter makes — again, this was coming off a 16-30 effort from three against Bellarmine, competition aside — and took advantage of Alabama’s defensive and rebounding woes, you could genuinely see it coming together.
Then tell me beforehand Otega Oweh and Jaland Lowe would combine for 43 points on 16-32 shooting with no health setbacks, Pope having the full $22 million roster he previously described as a Ferrari waiting to be taken for a spin and his 1A and 1B summer stars finally proving it together to open SEC play. Oh, and add in the fact Oats would be forced to play Noah Williamson — previously averaging 1.1 points per game — 18 minutes because his starting frontcourt would be out (Taylor Bol Bowen) or limited (Aiden Sherrell) due to injury.
I’m taking my chances with this group and quintupling down on that optimism. And then I’ll be tucking my tail and making the sad trip of shame back to Lexington realizing how foolish it all was.
Slow down the Tide from three? How about giving up 15 makes at a 40 percent clip, many wide-freaking-open with egregious execution or inexcusable scouting (or both)? Win on the glass, especially with a serious post advantage? Lose 41-37 while giving up 14 offensive rebounds. Score against one of the worst power-conference defenses in college basketball to at least turn it into a shootout? 74 total points and 34 in the first half to fall behind by as many as 21 points with shooting splits of 42/21/69, including 38/22/67 before intermission.
Failure across the board, leading to Pope’s fourth straight loss to Oats in four tries while falling to 1-5 on the year against ranked competition with an average margin of loss sitting at 15.6 points. They’ve now trailed by 20-plus points in four of the five, pushing the total to eight games of 20-plus-point deficits since he got the Kentucky job. He’s now 17-17 against high-major foes, including a 2-5 start in 2025-26.
As Pitino pointed out to us basketball bennies, there was a crutch for everything up to this point, mostly in the form of your Preseason All-SEC point guard and future lottery pick forward sitting on the bench. No more, excuses gone. This was Pope’s roster, built using blank checks, and the product was grossly uncompetitive. More of the same with the ball sticking, poor shot selection, inconsistent defense, and, inexplicably, a lack of want-to, constantly getting beat for 50/50 balls.
Rinse, repeat.
Oats was asked about his four-game winning streak against Kentucky after the blowout and he did his best to stay respectful while also not shying away from the fact that his program has passed the winningest tradition in college basketball — especially under Pope.
Remember the way John Calipari used to talk about Mark Fox at Georgia? Kinda like that.
“Kentucky’s not what everybody was hoping over there that they would be this year, but they still have a lot of talent. I think they’re going to win some games,” he said. “They had some injuries, and they’re getting their chemistry back together. Lucky for us, fortunate for us that they don’t have that many games under their belt with everybody available, and I don’t think their chemistry’s quite where they want it right now. But they’re still good. …
“It’s not like Coach Pope doesn’t know what he’s doing. I mean, he went in there and won a bunch of big games. So, it’s not like we just beat up on a bad team. They were good last year, and they’ve got a lot of talent this year. So, we’ve gotten our program up to where we’re competing with the best teams in the SEC. When I say competing, we’ve won more championships in the SEC than anybody since we got here seven years ago.”
Then he went on to reveal what we all see about this group that he found glaringly obvious on film: “When I watched them play, I didn’t feel like they moved the ball great,” adding, “When they played high-major teams that were really good, their assist rate’s very low.”
Stat-padding in buy games does not make this a Final Four contender. The win thought to be the turning point of this season where Pitino put us in timeout as media members? Well, the Johnnies just took a Quad 3 home loss to 8-6 Providence as 12.5-point favorites to earn a fifth slap on the wrist of their own this year. Oops!
Is Kentucky a bad basketball team? These Wildcats do not currently have an NCAA Tournament resume, but they have plenty of time to get there with 17 more games to go. They’ll probably be fine, as Oats said, once they build chemistry and stack some wins for momentum. There’s too much talent there not to level out as a middle-of-the-pack team in the SEC with the league down compared to its record-shattering year in Pope’s debut season. It’ll be good enough to be a top 30 or 40 team in the country and punch a ticket to the Big Dance as a No. 9 seed or whatever. Maybe that leads to a magical run out of nowhere, similar to the “great story” Aaron Harrison told in 2014? The quality may not be there, but the quantity may be.
But, like my dumb confidence going down to Tuscaloosa, that’s based on hope more than evidence.
None of this is what fans were promised this offseason and certainly not what donors thought they were paying for when gathering their nickels to fund this roster. Alabama treated Kentucky like little brother to open SEC play as Oats again coached circles around Pope — he even gave him some tips on fixing this team’s problems, as demoralizing as that is.
You shouldn’t expect to get boatraced in your first league matchup and look for silver linings like UK won the second half or at least they cut it to single digits after falling behind by 21. That’s not understanding the assignment. That’s not the gold standard. That’s not Kentucky basketball.
At this point, though, does any of it truly shock you? That’s the problem — this should never be normalized in Lexington. And for the first time this season, Pope has no excuses to fall back on. It’s his full-roster beatdown to eat.