I want to believe we will win every game. Realistically we will lose a few - some we shouldn’t - but we are going to win some we may not deserve to as well. This group just feels different to me. I’ve not been as optimistic about a team at UK in long time.
The floor for me would be our coach not allowing this group to run (See 2015) and us losing in the first or second round of the NCAA tournament. That would be unforgivable.
But if this team plays the way we saw tonight - team basketball; lots of ball movement; unselfish play and suffocating defense- if we lose before the final four playing like that I’ll be disappointed but I’ll be ok with the season.
I’m the worst prognosticator of this group so I hope no one decides to come back and make fun of this in 6 months - but I’m going to say we lose 6. I’m hopeful for a final four run.
34-6 and very happy or at the least bittersweet at the end of the season.
Okay, I'm going to be significantly more optimistic than TeamRankings, which has Kentucky the #20 team in the country, and the #5 team in the SEC. I am assuming that we are going to get the players returning healthy, as discussed, in the NCAA will release their hold on Z soon enough.
OOC: I'm going to chalk up (pun intended) a loss to Kansas November 14. I think we can win that game, but if I'm trying to be objective, I think they have an edge in it right now. The next game that we could potentially lose is Miami, but I think we win that one November 28.
That brings us to December 16 and North Carolina. I think we take that one.
So that's 11-1 if I do it game by game. If I calculated the percentage probabilities, though, I am positive it would easily be 10-2 or 9-3, so I'm going to go with 10-2. Then you have to add Gonzaga February 10. I think we win that one.
OOC: 11-2
SEC: Much more of a crapshoot than I thought. It's crazy to try to project this one game by game, so I won't do it. In the SEC, you can lose home or road games to almost anyone on any given day. But all you can do is try to figure out how consistent you will be and how you matchup against the teams. So rather than trying to project, I'm just going to do this by "feel." Or, maybe a slight hybrid. Looking at the schedule, 9 of the games are against teams that TeamRankings has in their top 32. Of course, 9 of them are outside that mark. Without even looking at home and away, which is ridiculous, I'm going to arbitrarily suggest that were going to lose 3 of the games against top 32 teams, and 1-2 against the non-top 32 teams.
I frankly don't know how tough a game will be on the road against a, say #53 Florida team, which TeamRankings suggest is a tossup. I don't really think it is but we will find out.
So let's go ahead and give Kentucky a 13-5 SEC record.
I know that Cal does not always value the SEC Tournament, but I think these players will. Mark me down with 3-0 SECT.
That gives us a fairly sporty 27-7 record heading into the NCAA Tournament (24-7 when the Selection Committee theoretically begins their debates in earnest). And I'm going to suggest that will get us a #3 seed. I don't know if that's accurate or not historically, just kind of feels right.
I think we win 3 games or more in the NCAA Tournament for a nice 30+ win season. It could be better than that if we progress to the Final Four or beyond.
Or I could be full of crap. Maybe we lose to Kansas, Miami North Carolina and Gonzaga in the out of conference and have a 9-4 record in OOC. Maybe the SEC predictors are correct, and we are the fifth best team in the SEC, and that record is more like 11-7. Maybe Cal blows off the SEC Tournament, and we go 1-1. We win our opening-round game in the NCAA Tournament, and lose on the weekend and start smashing computer monitors and television screens with a 22-13 final record, Round of 32.
I actually see that as the floor and do not believe that we will reach the floor. I think that my optimistic view is not even the ceiling, but maybe, maybe if I were trying to reconcile everything I would give 80% weight to the optimistic view and 20% weight to the floor view – again, just "feels" right – and that might mean that rather than 30+ wins, we end up with something like 27 or 28 wins.
Or again, that view could be full of crap as well. I have less confidence in my ability to predict Kentucky basketball games this season, although I do think it will be good. Just what "good" is, I'm not sure.
Darrell, I'm not sure folks appreciate how good some of the SEC teams will be this year. A&M, Missouri, and Mississippi are going to be really tough teams to beat. It won't take long for Beard to get Mississippi going. Missouri and A&M were tough for UK last year. We may lose one or two in Rupp. Two games against Arky and Tennessee will make for a challenging conference schedule. Note:I didn't mention Alabama and Vanderbilt who accounted for 3 or our losses last year. It will be wild in the SEC.
I'm going to go with 24-7 in the regular season, i just think were young and its going to take a while to really settle in without a few guys playing hero ball, which doesnt work against the best teams. I think we lock in at the SEC tourney and win the thing, so thats 27-7. We make a run in the tourney and win 4 to make it to the final four, then we drop the semifinal game, for a record of 31-8. Ill even bet its a familiar foe from our schedule that beats us, Kansas or an SEC team.
Tomorrow is a big game for SEC prediction, IMO. It will be a very tough game.
Lose it, we haven't lost traction, but win it, and we've gained, IMO.
UK is 10-2 with a weaker-than-usual Gonzaga left, so the 11-2 OOC predictions are looking pretty good. This may be a year when we have UK figured out pretty well.
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