Kentucky basketball is known as one of the greatest programs of all time and has an expectation of being a top-dog powerhouse and being towards the very top of the SEC and the top of the rankings in the country. However, as of recently Kentucky has more than failed expectations and left fans feeling way more than disappointed. Followers of basketball and Kentucky don’t know where the problem lies and are left questioning how strong their “championship” teams are.
Kentucky has an expectation of being a top 4 seed in the tournament and making the Sweet 16 at minimum every year. Kentucky has made the Sweet 16 ZERO times in the last five years and has faced first-round elimination to a Saint Peters team in 2022 and Oakland in 2024. These losses were nothing short of just embarrassing. They were a top 8 favorite to win the National Championship in both of those years and they just completely folded and faced terrible first-round exits to teams that had no national attention before that game.
As a Kentucky fan myself, I thought we would make it as far as the National Championship but that was short-lived because of their first-round exit to Oakland. Nobody had expected Oakland to come out as hot as they did and defeat Kentucky. With Kentucky losing, the world of college basketball is left to reflect on Kentucky’s problems. The lack of talent is certainly not the problem because the recruiting class was ranked #1 and in my opinion had the best young talent on the team. The fanbase has left to turn on the coaching with no adjustments being made and not playing the right people late in the game.
In an interview done with former Villanova Head Coach Jay Wright, he said that” Calipari’s style of basketball is not built for deep runs in March and he brings in freshman kids every year and plays for teenagers’ talent to compete with literally grown men standing on the other side of the court.” For example: two of Kentucky’s top performers this year; Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard are 19 years old which means they are still teenagers. The leading scorer for Oakland was 24 years old and this is a huge difference to expect just pure talent from teenagers to win March Madness games when they have never played in a game that big against grown men and it is just not going to work anymore.
In my opinion, after all of this and having time to reevaluate the loss, I think that changes do need to be made. I talked to a few of my friends about how they felt about the repeating losses and they all said they were extremely disappointed. I think that a collapse of many years in a row shows that something or someone is not working out. The University of Kentucky basketball program needs to figure it out and make these changes so Kentucky can return to its former glory at the top.
