Over the last few seasons of college hoops, teams that are full of veteran players who have played multiple years of college basketball have led teams to deep runs in the NCAA Tournament.

Looking at that blueprint, Kentucky’s new head basketball coach, Mark Pope, put together a roster full of players who have played a ton of college basketball and lots of games in the NCAA Tournament. Despite all of these elite additions via the transfer portal, the 2024-25 Kentucky basketball isn’t receiving much respect from the national media.

CBS Sports put out their updated top 25 for the upcoming 2024-25 season and the Kentucky Wildcats are not listed. The reality here is there are not 25 teams better than Kentucky in college basketball.

Coach Pope added an elite mix of defense and offense that should have the Wildcats in the top 20 of both the offensive and defensive numbers on KenPom. This plus players with a ton of upside, like Brandon Garrison, Otega Oweh, and Andrew Carr, should have the Wildcats listed in the top 25 ahead of the season.

It makes sense, though, as Coach Pope’s team isn’t one that gets college basketball writers excited ahead of the year because there aren’t a ton of highly ranked players when it comes to high school recruiting, but this team will have writers excited when March comes around.

Coach Pope and his team don’t care about rankings, but once this team is on the floor together, they will be able to prove to the college basketball world that they are capable of making a run in March.