Kentucky Wildcats guard Otega Oweh (00) smiles after drawing an offensive foul during the basketball game vs. Texas on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025, at The Moody Center in Austin, Texas. Texas won 82-78. Photo by Matthew Mueller | Photo Editor
The Kentucky Wildcats have built a reasonable resume heading into tournament season, beating eight opponents ranked in the AP Top 25 while currently maintaining a 21-10 overall record and a 10-8 SEC record.
A knock on the Cats has been that they have been extremely inconsistent this season, and their home, away and neutral records project a paramount example of that.
The Cats built a really strong home record, going 15-3 while only losing to No. 4 Alabama, Arkansas and No. 1 Auburn in Rupp Arena.
While playing in Lexington, UK was able to ground four quad-one wins, beating Louisville, No. 6 Florida, No. 11 Texas A&M and No. 5 Tennessee, heavily improving its attempt to get a solid seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Unfortunately for the Cats’ tournament resume, they have heavily faltered in games outside of Lexington this season, structuring a 4-6 true road record and a slightly more positive 2-1 record at neutral sites.
Kentucky dropped four true road games to unranked opponents, with the other two losses coming to ranked teams at No. 25 Ole Miss and No. 4 Alabama.
Against the Rebels, the Cats put on an extremely worrying display, surrendering 54 points in the first half alone en route to a 98-84 loss.
Prior to those contests, Kentucky began its true road journeys on Dec. 3 in Clemson, South Carolina, with a 70-66 loss to the Clemson Tigers, the team’s first road test of the Mark Pope era.
The subpar performance in the “Palmetto State” foreshadowed how Kentucky’s games away from Lexington would unfold, as it has been unable to play its own style of basketball, consisting of a quick pace with tons of 3-point attempts being put up.
In UK’s first neutral site game, however, it earned arguably its most impactful win of the season back on Nov. 12 when it beat No. 6 Duke 77-72 in the State Farm Champions Classic in Atlanta. Currently, the Blue Devils have just three losses and one of them being to Kentucky makes the Cats’ resume look even stronger.
The other neutral site win for Kentucky came in Seattle on Dec. 7 when it beat the No. 7 Gonzaga Bulldogs 90-89, overcoming a deficit that was as much as 18 points in the second half.
Kentucky was able to win its next two games at Rupp Arena before its luck at neutral sites drained out as the third and final neutral site game it played resulted in a 20-point blowout loss to Ohio State in the CBS Sports Classic back on Dec. 23 in New York City.
UK put up a low shooting performance against the Buckeyes, shooting just 29.8% from the field and 18.2% from deep, making just four of its attempted 3-point shots.
Kentucky’s problems away from Rupp Arena have popped up as a major concern to BBN, as most have trouble fathoming how such a poor road team can go on a tournament run away from home.
However, the more positive news is that both the SEC Tournament and NCAA Tournament are hosted on neutral sites where the Cats, for the most part, have played appealing basketball.