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I’m a couple of days late posting this, but — in case you missed it — Jay Bilas dismissed Kentucky’s chances of earning an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament Saturday night on College Gameday.

The segment started with Digger Phelps big-upping the Cats and predicting they would have a strong finish to the season. Then it was Bilas’ turn to speak:

I don’t think there’s any way that Kentucky can get in unless they win their conference tournament. They’re ten and nine.

He went on to say that Kentucky simply played too poorly in the first half of the season to be considered for an at-large berth. (I would have transcribed all of it but I don’t have access to my DVR right now). He noted that the Selection Committee will not simply ignore the first half of the season, which is true I suppose, but plenty of teams have started well and not made the tournament. (Last year’s Clemson team springs to mind. And this year’s Ole Miss and Vanderbilt teams are certainly no locks to make the tournament despite each going undefeated in non-conference play.) The Selection Committee certainly rewards teams that finish strong more so than it does teams that start fast.

Overall, I don’t really have a beef with what Bilas said. After all, we do have some terrible losses, we are ten and nine, and our RPI is still in the hundreds. An at-large bid is unlikely. And that’s putting it nicely.

That said, I have a hard time believing an at-large bid is definitely out of our reach. And writing that doesn’t make me a total homer. Joe Lunardi seemingly agrees, as does Andy Glockner, who writes ESPN.com’s weekly College Basketball Bubble Watch (”Kentucky is starting to make some noise. We’ll check back on the Cats next week.” [Link]). And then there’s SI.com’s Luke Wynn, who — bizarrely — has Kentucky listed under “On the Cusp, Tier II” in his weekly power rankings. [Link] If you add up the teams in front of us, he’s got us at No. 33.

Suffice it to say, I think there are scenarios in which Kentucky can earn an at-large bid.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Allenby for Heisman!, College Basketball, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.