No. 25 Kentucky men’s basketball (17-7, 8-3 SEC) made its way back into the AP Top 25 poll for the first time since Dec. 8, 2025, on Monday afternoon, taking the final spot in the top 25.

The Cats started the season at No. 9 in the Preseason AP Top 25 Poll, but quickly fell out following a grim 5-4 start, plagued by injuries to key players, including Jaland Lowe (shoulder) and Jayden Quaintance (knee).

During that opening stretch, Kentucky lost to No. 12 Louisville, No. 17 Michigan State, No. 16 North Carolina and No. 11 Gonzaga, shying away from its high expectations and ambitions of winning the program’s ninth national championship. 

Since their 5-4 beginning, the Wildcats surged on to win 12 of their next 15 games, winning four contests against three different ranked opponents: No. 22 St. John’s, No. 15 Arkansas, No. 24 and No. 25 Tennessee twice.

Kentucky’s only defeats during that stretch came against No. 14 Alabama, Missouri and most recently, No. 18 Vanderbilt on Jan. 17, but quickly responded and won three straight games.

This past week’s last slate of games included one ranked and one unranked matchup.

The Cats beat the Oklahoma Sooners 94-78 on Feb. 4 and the No. 25 Tennessee Volunteers 74-71 on Feb. 7 inside Rupp Arena, solidifying their spot in this week’s rankings.

Since becoming unranked, Lowe’s injury became season-ending, Quaintance has been held out with more knee issues and Kam Williams ended up going down as well, suffering a broken foot against Texas on Jan. 21.

Following those injuries, every player on UK has started to come around, including Otega Oweh, the SEC Preseason Player of the Year, who got off to a slow start, failing to score 20-plus points through UK’s first nine games, which is unusual for him.

Since the Cats’ status fell to unranked, Oweh has scored 20-plus points in 11 of UK’s 15 games, turning into that “lead by example” guy that most of the nation was expecting him to be from the jump.

This week, he earned SEC Co-Player of the week honors, tying a season high performance with 24 points against Oklahoma, and totaling 21 against the Volunteers.

Kentucky returns to play on Saturday, Feb. 14, when it travels down to Gainesville, Fla., to take on the No. 17 Florida Gators (17-6, 8-2 SEC). The game will determine the No.1 ranking in conference standings. Tipoff for that contest is set for 3 p.m. ET and can be viewed on ABC.