Getty Image / Jacob Kupferman
The last few years have been a major disappointment for the Kentucky Wildcats.
After years as a Sweet Sixteen regular, the Wildcats haven’t made it through the first weekend of college basketball’s NCAA Tournament in any of the last 3 years.
First it was an awful season where Kentucky finished the year with a 9-16 record.
They followed that up by losing to 15 seed St Peter’s in the NCAA Tournament.
This year, they were able to get by Providence in their first game in the tournament, but fell short against Kansas State in the second round.
Now it looks like the disappointments might not be ending any time soon for the Wildcats.
According to Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones, the program is currently in disarray and doesn’t have a real direction.
My comments from today about the state of UK Basketballhttps://t.co/u8WZnbG9Ea
— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) June 8, 2023
“But this is a fact: this program in the last few months, has been in complete disarray,” Jones said via On3. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen next, including the coaches. It has been in disarray and anybody that says otherwise it’s just wrong.”
Jones later added on Twitter that he believes Kentucky faces one big issue in the transfer portal.
While John Calipari believes that his program can get recruits based on the appeal of their success setting players up for big paydays in the NBA, that isn’t necessarily as appealing to players in the portal when they can get better NIL deals elsewhere.
Bottom line…in Portal/NIL era, you can sell to future NBA lottery picks (like Wagner/Bradshaw/Edwards) that NIL is “nickel and dime” compared to NBA max deals
You can’t sell it to Transfer Portal guys (like Dickinson/Johnson/Reeves) who will never see NBA Max and need NIL $$$
— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) June 8, 2023
Kentucky has suffered some big losses this offseason, including Oscar Tshiebwe. In total, they had 9 players either declare for the draft or transfer.
They have a star-studded recruiting class coming in as usual, but will have very little experience on next year’s roster after striking out on some big names in the transfer portal.
While Kentucky Wildcats fans will be hoping that the program can get back to making deep tournament runs, it is looking like more disappointment could be in their future.