You know who else the SEC isn’t doing any favors? It’s Mark Pope
Auburn (at Arkansas, at Florida and at Tennessee) and Tennessee (at Arkansas, at Florida, at Kentucky) will both play three such games.
John Calipari and Arkansas will face only two (at Auburn, at Florida) of the SEC’s other top five teams on the road.
As Florida guns for an NCAA title repeat, Todd Golden’s Gators will play only one game on the road against another of the SEC’s projected top five teams — and that, of course, will be at Rupp Arena.
Circumstances, not an anti-Big Blue conspiracy in the SEC office, are the main reason Kentucky’s league road slate looks so daunting for 2025-26.That matters because part of Pope’s assignment in attempting to restore the luster to UK basketball is to get the Cats back to winning Southeastern Conference championships.
As UK backers are all too aware, Kentucky has not won an SEC regular season crown since 2019-20.
The Wildcats have not cut down the nets after claiming victory in an SEC Tournament since 2017-18.
For a program that has won or shared in 49 previous SEC regular season championships and claimed the SEC Tournament title 32 times, those championship droughts feel of biblical proportions.As we know, the SEC alternates home-and-away sites in back-to-back years for teams that do not face each other twice in a given season. So UK road trips to Arkansas and Auburn in the coming season are return dates for games that were played in Lexington in 2024-25.
Under the SEC scheduling format in effect since Oklahoma and Texas joined the league in 2024, Kentucky annually plays home-and-home with Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
Only UK’s double-dip with Florida this season is discretionary scheduling. One can surmise that ESPN, the SEC’s media rights holder, was beyond keen at the idea of telecasting two games pitting the reigning national champion and the Southeastern Conference’s traditional men’s hoops kingpin.
We’ll see if the teams projected by the national basketball gurus to be the five best in the SEC right now turn out to be so next winter. As viewed presently, however, Kentucky’s path to an SEC regular season title in 2025-26 looks far more arduous than those faced by the teams that figure to be the Wildcats’ toughest challengers.If the men’s college hoops analysts are correct, the SEC overall will not be as formidable in 2025-26 as it was during 2024-25’s historic season for the league.
Last year, as you well know, the SEC put a record 14 teams into the NCAA Tournament, filled seven of the slots in the Sweet 16, had half of the Elite Eight, two of the Final Four and produced the national champion.
This year, CBSSports.com projects “only” seven SEC teams in its Top 25; ESPN.com and On3.com each have six; SI.com has a mere five.
Nevertheless, given how many of the SEC’s other projected top teams Kentucky must play on the road in 2025-26, this is a certainty for Pope’s second season on the UK bench:
