College Basketball Preview: Is Kentucky Still the Class of an Improving SEC?

Team to Beat: Kentucky Wildcats

It is hard to pick against Cal and his slew of top recruits. It does not always look perfect, especially immediately, but given his second-ranked recruiting class, including 5 of the top-24 and 7 of the top-66 recruits, you have to trust that the talent will be too much for their competition to handle once SEC play begins.

But for as great a legacy as Calipari is writing for himself at Kentucky, he has had as many underachieving seasons as he has had truly successful ones. While they have reached four Final Fours and two National Championship games since 2009, they have also suffered four seasons with five or more conference defeats, all of which were part of nine loss-plus seasons, which is hard to fathom with UK playing in the usually weaker SEC.

Not to say this is a team ready to disappoint, but if the pressure is really put on this group early, the Wildcats are no shoo-in for a dominant performance in the conference. However, there is once again no shortage of talent in Lexington, and the name Kentucky and a recruiting class that included the likes of Kevin Knox, P.J. Washington, Nick Richards, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Quade Green -- along with a top-10 preseason rank -- combine to put a natural target on Kentucky's back.