So, here is a fun statistic. In John Calipari’s eight years at Kentucky, here is where the Wildcats have been ranked in the preseason AP poll: 4th, 11th, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 5th. They’re ranked 2nd to open 2018-19.
Here is where they’ve finished: 2nd, 11th, 1st, unranked, unranked, 1st, 10th, 5th, 18th. (In KenPom, they’ve finished those seasons ranked 4th, 7th, 1st, 55th, 13th, 1st, 6th, 4th, and 17th.) In five of the last six years, though, Kentucky has ranked lower at the end of the season than where they began. With the exception of 2012-13, they’ve made the NCAA Tournament in each of those seasons, and 2018 was only the second time under Calipari that they made the tournament and lost prior to the Elite Eight.