After suffering their second loss in three games, and third in their last six, the Kentucky Wildcats have dropped to a No. 5 seed in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology Report projecting the college basketball NCAA Tournament field at ESPN.
This particular projection has the Wildcats playing in the East Region and starting in Brooklyn, where they would face No. 12 seed Richmond, the automatic qualifier out of the Atlantic 10 and a team that is 8-0 in conference play and recently defeated powerhouse Dayton.
The Wildcats peaked as a No. 2 seed a few weeks ago, but a pair of road losses to Texas A&M and South Carolina brought them back to earth – and then a home loss to Florida on Wednesday dropped them even further.
John Calipari’s team is now 5-3 in the SEC and in a three-way tie with Ole Miss and the Gators for fifth place in the conference, and they still have two games left against Tennessee, road games against Auburn and Mississippi State, and a home battle with Alabama left on the calendar – not to mention a tough non-conference game coming up next Saturday when they host Gonzaga.