Is the NCAA Tournament field decided in December? No. Do rankings and advanced analytics really matter at this stage? Of course not — although the last 20 national champions have been ranked inside the top 12 of the Week 6 AP Poll, so there is some correlation there. In the grand scheme of things, though, anybody can play their way into title contention status just as easily as they can play their way out and the conference schedule is when things get really serious.

That doesn’t mean power rankings and national perception are irrelevant, though. In fact, Kentucky‘s standing in all aspects — recruiting, home advantage, fan passion, winningest tradition, everything — is important to Mark Pope.

No matter how big or small, the king of college basketball is supposed to win everything. And that’s the kind of program Pope wants to lead in Lexington. So while the Wildcats’ status as the No. 5 team in the AP Poll, Coaches Poll and the NET on Dec. 12 won’t impact what they’ll be in March, it’s still important.

“Listen, I’m glad we are in the conversation and I’m glad we are in the national conversation,” Pope said. “That’s where we are supposed to be, it’s Kentucky, right? I’m really happy with all of that. More importantly, I just want us to be a great team, right? And we want to keep getting better.”

He didn’t like how Kentucky played after going up 17-0 against Colgate, but he did like the resolve and end result of a win to move to 9-1 on the year.

“We had some runs tonight where we got better. We started the game better and then we just — the energy just turned a little bit on us. But we will learn from this and we will get better,” Pope said. “Right now it’s a race to get better. It’s Kentucky, we have to win every game along the way. That’s a beautiful thing and I’m not complaining, I think that’s why Kentucky is special. All of the things matter, everything matters.

“The metrics matter, the analytics matter, the efficiencies matter. All of those things are really important to us. We would like to be the flagship program in every single category that we grade and rank and evaluate as a team. That’s our goal. It’s all really important.”

A record-setting senior season paved the way for Kentucky kicker Alex Raynor to become the Wildcats’ first SEC Special Teams Player of the Year, the league announced on Wednesday.

The Kennesaw, Ga., native made his first 15 field goal attempts this season and finished 15-of-16, a 93.8% clip, tops in the SEC and the best figure in UK program history. He was also the previous record holder after hitting 10 of 11 during the 2023 season.

Raynor made 25 of 27 field goals during his two seasons at Kentucky, including a school-record 55-yard field goal against Georgia. He also made a 51-yarder against the Bulldogs, marking only the second time in program history that a kicker made two attempts from beyond 50 yards in the same game.

His two field goals in a 20-17 upset of No. 6 Ole Miss earned him the Lou Groza Award Star of the Week honors. He is a finalist for the national award.

Three other Cats joined Raynor on the All-SEC Coaches Team, including wide receiver/return specialist Barion Brown, center Eli Cox, and defensive tackle Deone Walker. Brown was a first-team selection as a return specialist, while Cox and Walker were named to the third team.

Mark Pope didn’t need to bust out a zone defense this season until the Gonzaga game. But when he did, it completely changed the momentum.

A 16-point halftime lead for the Bulldogs quickly disappeared as Kentucky implemented a 1-3-1 zone that stymied the Gonzaga offense. The Zags shot 54.3 percent from the field in the first half but just 38.9 percent in the second half and overtime. With help from the zone, Kentucky overcame a massive deficit and went on to win in overtime, 90-89.

To be clear, Pope didn’t utilize the 1-3-1 defense on every possession in the second half. If anything, it was brought out on every third or fourth possession on average — if that. And even then, Kentucky would almost immediately switch to man defense after a pass from Gonzaga. Only a couple of times did the 1-3-1 zone play out for an entire defensive possession.

But that was the plan, to mix up the defensive tactics just enough to throw Gonzaga off from what was a beautiful first half of offense by Mark Few‘s crew. It clearly worked. Gonzaga went from dropping 50 points in the first half to only 29 in the second. They shot 0-9 from deep in the second half.

“The execution that we wanted to do was just confuse them a little bit, slow them down a little bit, mess up their flow, and see how they reacted to it,” Kentucky fifth-year forward Ansley Almonor said on Tuesday. “They didn’t react that well. I think it worked.”

“Just to keep the offense off balance,” Sophomore center Brandon Garrison added. “They don’t know whether we’re in a zone, how fast we’re gonna get in man. If they call a zone play for instance and then we switch to man, it’ll mess up their whole offense. Just getting the offense off rhythm.”

This was the first time all season we truly saw Pope roll out a zone and go back to it, but it’s not anything his players weren’t prepared to execute. “We practice it every day,” Garrison said. It’s sort of like a ‘break-in-case-of-emergency’ type thing. Being down 16 points at the half in what was essentially a road game seems glass-breaking worthy to me. Pope’s guys were more than ready to handle the emergency, too.

“We practice that a good amount, for situations like that,” Almonor said. “When the opposing offense has good flow or they’re scoring a lot, just throw something different at them to see how they react to that. And it worked.”

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