Can a team with Kentucky’s statistical profile reach the Final Four?

As is the case in any year, expectations are high for Kentucky this March in the NCAA Tournament.

The Wildcats have had an up-and-down season, but are entering the latter stages of the regular season with legitimate Final Four aspirations. The question is: Is reaching the Final Four a realistic goal considering UK’s statistical makeup in 2024?

The answer, as you might expect, is somewhat complicated.

Kentucky brings a strong-but-flawed statistical profile to the table. The strength of this Kentucky team is in its offense — more specifically as covered last week, its elite shooting ability. UK ranks 8th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom.

The issues with Kentucky’s profile lie elsewhere. The Wildcats rank 97th in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom. The Wildcats have given up more than 1.1 points per possession in 10 of their last 15 games. As a result, they’re just 9-6 over that span and have fallen out of SEC regular season title contention.

I examined the pre-tournament KenPom ratings for every team who has made the Final Four in the last 10 NCAA Tournaments. The only team who made the Final Four with a worse adjusted defensive rating over that span was 2023 Miami. The Canes’ pre-tournament adjusted defensive rating of 102.9 is by far the worst of any Final Four team over the last decade (no other team was worse than 97.7).

There was briefly some hope that Kentucky had turned things around defensively in late February, as it had a stretch where it allowed under 1 point per possession (adjusted for opponent) in 3 straight games. But the Wildcats have regressed again, as they gave up 102 points (and 1.18 points per possession) at home to a struggling Arkansas team last time out.

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Tempo is also potentially a limiting factor for Kentucky, if history is to be believed. The Wildcats have an adjusted tempo of 72.8, per KenPom. The only Final Four team over the last decade to have a faster adjusted tempo is 2021 Gonzaga.

That Bulldogs team is not a great point of comparison for Kentucky for a variety of reasons. Most notably, Gonzaga was top-10 in adjusted defensive efficiency that season. And despite having a faster tempo than Kentucky overall, the Bulldogs forced opposing offenses to work much harder than this Kentucky team does. Gonzaga’s average defensive possession in 2021 was 18 seconds — a full second slower than UK’s number in that category going into this weekend.

Miami’s run to the 2023 Final Four is a clear outlier over the last decade, but may represent Kentucky’s best path to the 3rd weekend in 2024. The 2023 Hurricanes and 2024 Wildcats have relatively similar adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency profiles. Miami did play at a slower pace, however, with an adjusted tempo of 68.8.

There is a bit of good news with Kentucky’s offense. The Wildcats have some flaws, no doubt, but their offense is absolutely Final Four-quality. Kentucky’s adjusted offensive rating of 123.4 would rank 6th amongst all Final Four programs over the past decade. Only 2019 Virginia, 2015 Duke, 2021 Gonzaga, 2015 Wisconsin and 2018 Villanova rank higher in that category. Reed Sheppard, Rob Dillingham and Antonio Reeves are all elite shooters from 3-point land and in the mid-range. That triumvirate will give Kentucky a chance to win virtually any game it plays in if their shots are falling at a normal rate.

But when comparing Kentucky’s statistical profile to that of other recent NCAA Tournament teams, it paints a bleak picture. According to BartTorvik, here are the 10 NCAA Tournament teams since 2008 that most-resemble this Kentucky squad when considering only offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency and tempo:

There’s not a whole lot of NCAA Tournament success in that chart. Only 2017 UCLA, 2014 Iowa State and 2016 Iowa State made it to the 2nd weekend of the Big Dance. None of the above teams made it to the Final Four. Those 10 teams combined to win 7 games — less than 1 victory apiece on average.

Perhaps most concerning the sheer number of upsets this group has endured: 2022 Alabama, 2014 Oklahoma, 2015 Iowa State and 2023 Arizona all suffered embarrassing 1st-round exits as a 6-seed or better. On the other side of the coin, none of these teams out-performed their expected NCAA Tournament result (based on seeding). Only a few (2017 UCLA, 2014 Iowa State, 2011 Washington and 2016 Iowa State) managed to simply meet seed-based expectations.

Teams rarely luck into a Final Four berth. Even recent Cinderella stories like 2013 Florida Atlantic and 2018 Loyola-Chicago have performed better than 2024 Kentucky in some of the key opponent-adjusted benchmarks mentioned in this story. Not to mention some of the high-major teams who have made runs to the Final Four from unlikely seed lines, such as 2016 Syracuse, 2021 UCLA and 2022 North Carolina (all of those teams had significantly-better adjusted defensive ratings).

The NCAA Tournament is always going to have a certain level of randomness that allows unheralded teams to make a deep run — that’s what makes it the greatest postseason in sports. No one is going to confuse Kentucky with Cinderella this March, but history shows that this ‘Cats team making a Final Four run this March is highly unlikely. This Kentucky team’s statistical profile has a lot of 1st-round upset exposure and not much upside, historically speaking. That’s not a great place to be as UK attempts to reach the Final Four since 2015.

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