Kentucky's upset at Tennessee was a big NCAA Tournament resume booster
A loss at Tennessee would not have hurt Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament resume. The Vols are No. 4 in the NET Rankings and were a 10.5-point favorite at tipoff; the Cats, who were without two starters for 95% of the game, were expected to lose — which is why it’s so, so impressive that they won. And significant.
This morning, Kentucky is up four spots to No. 12 in the NET Rankings. The 78-73 victory over the Vols is now the Cats’ most impressive of the season in terms of resume. While Duke is ranked one spot higher than Tennessee in the NET, road wins are valued more than neutral site wins, putting the win on Rocky Top a notch above the early season win over the Blue Devils in the Champions Classic.
Kentucky now has seven Quad 1 wins, which ranks third in the country behind Auburn (11) and Oregon (8). As a fan pointed out on Twitter last night, Mark Pope has more Quad 1 wins this season than John Calipari (1), Dan Hurley (3), and Scott Drew (2) combined. The Cats rank fifth in Wins Above Bubble (WAB), a NET metric that measures how many more wins a team has than an NCAA Tournament bubble team. Kentucky’s WAB is 4.49, which is behind Auburn (8.27), Alabama (6.07), Duke (4.78), and Iowa State (4.66). With seven of the remaining 11 games in Quad 1, the Cats have several more opportunities to improve their resume — and with those other four, some chances to hurt it.
I touched on this Monday, but the fact that all of Kentucky’s losses are in Quad 1 is also significant; the Selection Committee doesn’t punish teams as much for losses to “good” teams. That makes it doubly important not to lose to “bad” teams, especially at home. Of the four remaining games outside Quad 1, three are in Quad 2 (Arkansas, Vanderbilt, LSU) and one in Quad 3 (South Carolina). All of those are at Rupp. Kentucky cannot afford to drop any of them, starting with Saturday’s emotional game vs. John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks.
https://www.on3.com/teams/kentucky-wildcats/news/kentucky-upset-tennessee-net-kenpom-rankings-ncaa-tournament-resume/