NCAA Basketball: Buy or Sell preseason top 25 teams of 2021-22 after a month
10. Kentucky Wildcats
After last season’s disaster, Kentucky was looking to get back into the national title picture, thanks to a completely rebuilt roster that featured veteran transfers to add some experience onto the roster.
One of them is West Virginia transfer Oscar Tshiebwe, who has been one of the best pickups from the portal. He had back-to-back games of 20 rebounds against Duke and Robert Morris to start the season and has become the go-to scorer offensively, averaging 16.3 ppg and 14.4 rpg through nine games.
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As good as Tshiebwe has been, the rest of the team has been solid. Freshman guard TyTy Washington is the team’s second-leading scorer at 13.8 ppg but his two worst performances have come against the only two opponents of note, Duke and Notre Dame. That’s been the case for the rest of the team outside of Tshibwe, including starting point guard Sahvir Wheeler, Davidson grad transfer Kellan Grady and starting forward Keion Brooks.
The issue with judging the Wildcats is that they’re 7-2 on the season, with Ohio being the best win to date. The schedule gets tougher this weekend, with Louisville and Ohio State coming up next. Those games will give us a better view as to how good this team is. Are they still top-25 good? I would say yes. But as a true Final four contender after being ranked in the top-10 to start the season? I can’t go that far just yet.