Mark Pope pressed every correct button when it comes to building a roster for the upcoming 2025-26 season, which is why the Kentucky Wildcats will be one of the best teams in the nation. There are four boxes to be checked when putting together a college basketball roster: 1) Land players in the transfer portal, 2) Land elite high school recruits, 3) Retain players from your team the year before, and 4) Find international talent. Coach Pope checked all four of these boxes with his roster for the upcoming season, adding fire to the fact that this team can win the national title. One of the best analytics pages in college basketball now is Bart Torvik, and one of the metrics on this website really likes the Kentucky Wildcats. One metric that means a lot is the Projected Effective Talent numbers, and the Wildcats’ number was 87.6. This was good for second, only behind the Duke Blue Devils, whose number is 90.5. It doesn’t come as a surprise that this number is so high for Duke, as they have so much projected NBARead More
Analytics believe Kentucky has the second most talented roster in college basketball
