Before this season began, a reader reached out and asked me if I would write a similar roster-value breakdown for Kentucky that I had written earlier in the offseason about North Carolina. That UNC article — which broke down a roster reported to have cost around $14 million in NIL — was well received because it challenged the idea that Top 5 spending automatically equals top-5 roster quality, or even top 25 in UNC’s case. I laid out why I didn’t believe UNC’s investment aligned with their actual talent level and pointed to several more efficient transfer targets like Chad Baker-Mazara, PJ Haggerty, Jason Edwards, or the cheaper ones like Jemel Jones, Will Johnston, Scotty Middleton, and Jalen Celestine — all players obtainable at similar or far lower NIL prices reportedly and who ultimately landed at mid- or lower-tier P5 destinations such as USC, Kansas State, Providence, and Cincinnati. Players that should have been available to a program with the stature of North Carolina with deep pockets.
The idea was simple: value matters, even in the NIL era.
So naturally the same reader asked me: “Why don’t you do this for Kentucky too? Their NIL budget was just reported at $22 million.”
At the time I thought that number was wildly disproportionate to the roster’s actual quality, but I also stopped short of writing a critical article because, even with the massive overpay, my model still had Kentucky 6th nationally in the preseason. That ranking was mostly driven by one player: Otega Oweh, who graded out as the 6th-best returning player in the country. I figured it’s hard to be overly harsh about a team that was ranked in my top 10, even if I thought for that price tag they should be 1st and probably by a lot. My thinking at the time was it would just be a rehash with many of the top transfers in my model as well and a very similar article with options. Those were my value guys.
It seems like years ago at this point, but Kentucky did beat Purdue in an an exhibition which was after this suggestion. But now? After Kentucky just took a 35-point beating from Gonzaga in what was essentially a home game in Nashville? It’s time to say everything clearly. This roster is a disaster — structurally, financially, and strategically.
And every issue structurally I mentioned to that reader months ago despite the high ranking has unfolded and collapsed taking this team down.
The Preseason Red Flags: An Overpriced, Poorly Constructed Roster
When I evaluated Kentucky before the season, I told the reader exactly this: “Yes, this is a massive overpay for $22 million. And no, I don’t like the Lowe-Williams-Aberdeen overpays all relative to the money they must have spent.”
I said that because my model (and common sense) simply didn’t support the national hype surrounding several players.
Below is where Kentucky’s roster ranked in my preseason model, including my preseason projections for the incoming freshmen:
These rankings of returning players or international ones are objective. They reflect production, efficiency, SOS, athletic translation, and statistical profiles across all comparable players.
And right away, several glaring problems popped.
The Kam Williams Problem: A Transfer Misread as a Breakout Star
I’ve said this all offseason: the hype around Kam Williams never made sense.
He was a 9.3 PPG, 4.5 RPG, 15.2 PER role player in 32.4 minutes at Tulane against a 150-level SOS — and he couldn’t elevate that team despite ample opportunity. Tulane was 144th ranked last year and he was the 5th option 13% usage that got none on a team that needed more juice and wasn’t even good. He wasn’t an above-average player even there. Yet I saw him appear ranked highly on national transfer rankings and mock NBA draft lists. It was absurd. We’ve written articles on here about him in particular.
My model had him 818th. I thought he was a bad fit, a bad value, and a player who had shown no ability to level up to SEC competition.
Kentucky treated him like a premium asset. He was, in reality, the definition of a massive overpay and miss evaluation.
The Denzel Aberdeen Overpay: A Role Player Elevated to High Usage
I said this the moment Kentucky paid him: “Aberdeen is a massive overpay for what is essentially a role player.”
And now he’s your starting point guard.
If you had told me in July that this roster would revolve around Aberdeen running the offense, I would have told you Kentucky would be a bad team with serious fit problems.
To his credit, he has played better than I expected — but that’s actually even scarier for Kentucky. Because even with Aberdeen overachieving:
they are still getting demolished.
And regression is coming in my opinion. His scoring, and 2 point efficiency, and finishing numbers are absolutely due to fall off against real competition. Kentucky’s SOS so far is only around 45th.
If he’s your bright spot, that’s probably a catastrophic sign.
The Jaland Lowe Bet: High Usage With Low Efficiency
My model ranked Lowe 151st, far lower than most places, because inefficient high-usage guards rarely age well when asked to scale up.
However he is one of the only true creators on this roster, and that alone forces him into a role he’s not optimized for. Kentucky needed a clean, disciplined initiator; they paid for an inefficient volume guy you need to build the roster around and he’s simply not good enough. That should have been clear looking at Pitt last year. That’s what the 151’s ranked player will get you as a team building around. He played vs Gonzaga but they still need him more healthy and to play more just to have functioning point guard play and ball handing, or any creation he can give them.
This is a recurring theme:
Kentucky spent money like the elite top blue blood in the nation, but shopped like it was Pitt, or even worse on the bargin isle at Florida or Tulane for role players.
You are Kentucky. Why are you paying premium NIL money for a player coming off a major ACL injury? That is the definition of a distressed asset.
My model loved Quaintance when healthy — ranked 68th, which is elite especially for his age and trajectory. But he was always projected to miss at least a third of the season, and dropping a major-injury 18 year old that relied on athleticism, on to a new team and coach into SEC play mid-year was always an issue.
Kentucky acted as if health risk didn’t exist. Elite programs are supposed to avoid these gambles, not pay top dollar for them with so many equally great options out there this spring. Why? If this was a program like Kansas State that backed the money truck up, then I would get the gamble, but Kentucky with 22 million dollars?
Even if he returns at 85% — and that is optimistic — you already lost the benefit of at least a 3rd of the season, and the roster around him lacks the structure necessary to support a recovering player that plays like him with spacing a point guard etc. Why would he even risk it. He can just say his knee isn’t ready at this point and frankly less than a year later it’s probably not anyway.
The Reality: This Was A Dysfunctional Roster Even Before They Played a Game
Even with my doubts, I still ranked Kentucky 6th in the preseason assuming full health of Quaintance and, because Otega Oweh is that good and the rest looked theoretically salvageable around him. I had never had to factor in a player coming off ACL like that in the model or adjusted for it. As confident at Kentucky acted that he would be back early I let that one ride.
So here are the structural flaws right now:
No elite point guard
No spacing
No high-IQ initiator
No lineup synergy
Several overpaid, low-value transfers
A risky rehab project treated like a sure thing
The shooting collapse alone is shocking:
Last year: 28th nationally in 3PT% and 44th in 3PT makes
This year under Mark Pope: 250th in 3PT% and 119th in makes
For a Mark Pope roster, that is almost unimaginable. How do you spend $22 million and not buy shooting? PG play, heath risk etc.
Worse: the lack of spacing destroys what Otega Oweh does best. Last season he had a legitimate point guard to get him the ball, shooting threats around him, and clean driving lanes. Even now he remains highly efficient — .580 true shooting despite terrible shooting and poor point guard play — and I still think he’s receiving unfair criticism.
I can’t speak to his leadership, nor do I care that much about that. The coach is the leader and Oweh play on the court is not the problem in my opinion. The roster construction is.
The Gonzaga Game: The Breaking Point
When you lose by 35 points to Gonzaga in what is essentially a home environment in Nashville, that’s not a bad night. It’s the worst night in decades.
That’s a structural failure.
That’s a roster that does not work. That’s a roster that was overpriced and mis built from day one. That’s a $22 million allocation gone wrong in almost every way conceivable and what makes it so bad when the next highest paid rosters were closer to 14 or 15 million. That’s going to and should bring enormous pressure onto Mark Pope.
This Is Not Fixable
The most alarming part? Even with Aberdeen overachieving… Even with Lowe back playing… Even with Otega Oweh still being star quality… Even with Quaintance still waiting in the wings…
Kentucky is getting worse, not better.
This roster was a massive overpay. It was built on distressed assets, inefficient guards, and mispriced overvalued transfers. It lacks spacing, synergy, and the baseline architecture of a top-10 team. It never made sense on paper, and it is even worse on the court.
Kentucky didn’t just miss on a few pieces — they fundamentally misunderstood roster value.
This is a $22 million disaster. And it’s only December.
At this point, the realistic goal for Kentucky should be simply making the NCAA Tournament and hoping the team is playing well enough to pull off a Calipari-style run to the second weekend. There is still talent on this roster — enough, for example, to beat a team like Purdue in an exhibition — but the ceiling has already been lowered by poor construction and fit. If Mark Pope loses this team and it snowballs into anything less than a tournament appearance, he’s essentially a dead man walking. Maybe not immediately this spring, but next season he will be under immense pressure to deliver a top-10 team that advances to at least the second weekend just to start repairing faith with Kentucky fans. You don’t simply recover from a season like this without instilling confidence, and the fact that he was handed $22 million in NIL resources makes the failure all the more glaring. What should have been an easy spring at one of college basketball’s blueblood programs has instead become a full-blown crisis.
