LEXINGTON, Ky. — The college basketball season is still five months away, but the preseason rankings are basically settled, and there’s a consensus regarding Kentucky’s place on the list.

Mark Pope’s Wildcats are viewed as a top-10ish team nationally and a legitimate Final Four contender, a group with a realistic shot at competing for a national title if the pieces fall into place.

Those pieces to Pope’s second UK roster started arriving in town late last week, and a closer look at the 2025-26 version of the Cats suggests something brewing beyond this coming season.

Yes, Kentucky should be special once the games start in November.

But it certainly seems that this particular group will have an effect that lasts beyond their final game together as a unit.

As the Cats began showing up on campus last week, UK documented their arrivals with short videos on social media. The first newcomer featured was Pittsburgh transfer Jaland Lowe, who is projected to be the Wildcats’ starting point guard this season.

Lowe, who has been touted in the past as a possible NBA-level player, has two years of NCAA eligibility remaining. And that’ll be a theme across this Kentucky roster.

Pope’s second group is expected to feature more overall talent than his first. And this bunch should have more staying power, too, a crucial ingredient to success in the current landscape of college basketball.

While Pope’s built-on-the-fly roster for the 2024-25 season was plenty formidable — the Cats rocketed into the AP top five before injuries started piling up and became the first UK team in six years to advance past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament — that group had some built-in limitations over the long term.

Of the 12 scholarship players on last season’s team, seven arrived in Lexington with just one year of eligibility left. Pope, knowing full well that UK fans had grown tired of the revolving door nature of the program under John Calipari, touted roster continuity as a goal moving forward.

The new UK coach also knew that would be a difficult task right out of the gate, with the makeup of his first roster — and the transient nature of the college game, in general, with the open transfer portal and NIL opportunities leading to constant movement — severely limiting what was immediately possible.

The objective of Pope’s first, abbreviated offseason was to build a roster that could compete right away. That was a success.

The objective this offseason was the same, with the added wrinkle of doing whatever possible to build more of a foundation for roster continuity moving forward. That’s been a success, too.

Of the 15 players on UK’s 2025-26 roster, a whopping 12 will have additional eligibility beyond this coming season. That brings bountiful possibilities for the future of Kentucky basketball.

More experience with Pope

On his first Selection Sunday as UK’s coach, Pope celebrated the 3 seed that his Wildcats had earned in the 2025 NCAA tournament and looked back at their achievements to that point in the season through the lens of where they started.

The Wildcats, their coach correctly stated that night, ranked 355th nationally (out of 364 teams) in roster continuity, according to the KenPom numbers.

“That’s an insane number,” Pope said. “And to do it in this league, in the SEC, as a brand-new group that’s never functioned together — what these guys have accomplished already is really incredible.”

The word “continuity” was thrown around throughout the season by Pope. As in, the Cats didn’t have much of it, and that meant a longer learning process, even for a roster filled with experienced guys.

Those players openly talked about wishing they had one more year under Pope to continue to evolve before leaving college.

Koby Brea, who emerged as the Cats’ top NBA draft prospect, showed late growth in several aspects of his game. Amari Williams, who worked himself into the draft conversation with his accomplished play down the stretch, came right out and said it after a game in Rupp Arena late in the season.

“I wish I had another year,” UK’s starting center declared with a wistful smile.

Pope surely wished the same.

In his first press conference this offseason, the Kentucky coach acknowledged that his players typically make “massive” jumps from year one to year two. Jaxson Robinson, who emerged as a star player in his second season with Pope at BYU, was a prime example.

Pope has also specifically talked about how his four scholarship returnees from last season’s UK team — Otega Oweh, Brandon Garrison, Collin Chandler and Trent Noah — should benefit greatly from a year of experience in his system.

“You know, wherever I’ve coached, it’s so fun — year two is so fun — because year one is just this onslaught of learning decision-making,” he said. “I mean, as a broad brush, you’re just overwhelmed with learning decision making. Learning decision-making takes time, right? Learning dot to dot takes a little bit of time. … And (to) understand why and where and how and the skill set to actually do it. And what works and what doesn’t. And what works for you as an individual player with your skill set and what doesn’t.”

Better versions of those four returnees — in some cases, possibly much better versions — will be the expectation for Pope and the UK coaching staff. And they’ve set themselves up beautifully to carry that momentum well beyond the 2025-26 season.

Future of Kentucky basketball

Of the 15 players on UK’s roster, only Oweh, longtime walk-on Walker Horn — now confirmed to be back with the Cats for 2025-26 — and newcomer Denzel Aberdeen, who spent the past three years with the Florida Gators and won a national title in April, will be out of eligibility after this season.

That doesn’t mean all 12 of the other Cats will be back beyond the 2025-26 campaign, of course.

Arizona State transfer Jayden Quaintance is viewed as a potential lottery pick in next year’s NBA draft. Garrison, a former McDonald’s All-American, has talked about being on a “two-year plan” at Kentucky, with the objective of moving on to the NBA after this season.

It’s possible some others — freshmen Jasper Johnson or Andrija Jelavic, for instance — break out as big-time players and work their way into the 2026 NBA draft picture. And it’s probably inevitable that a player or two from this roster will look to transfer elsewhere next spring. That’s just the reality of college basketball right now.

But, in their quest for that precious roster continuity, Pope and his staff have left themselves with plenty of wiggle room.

At minimum, three starters from the 2025-26 roster will at the very least be eligible to return to UK a year from now. Looking beyond this season, it’s certainly plausible that Kentucky could be sitting on a 2026-27 starting lineup that features some combination of Lowe, Chandler, Johnson, high-upside Tulane transfer Kam Williams, instant-impact Alabama transfer Mouhamed Dioubate, Jelavic and Malachi Moreno, a McDonald’s All-American this year.

And that’s not even taking into account the possibility of landing a one-and-done-level star from the high school recruiting class of 2026 or the extreme likelihood of getting starter-level talent out of the transfer portal next offseason.

Pope, barring the unforeseen, has built not just a top-10 roster for this coming season, but he’s all but ensured the Cats will be boasting another one at this time next year.

Continuity is the current recipe for success in college basketball.

Of the 20 starters across the four Final Four teams this year, 12 had previous experience with their school. And that stat came despite Duke’s uber-talented lineup — featuring a trio of NBA lottery freshmen, led by Cooper Flagg — having just one returning starter.

Thirteen of the 16 players who played in the NCAA title game between Florida and Houston had been with their schools the previous season, including Final Four Most Outstanding Player Walter Clayton Jr.

In late January, Pope looked toward the future and hoped aloud that roster retention would be a “natural offshoot” of the way he was running the Wildcats’ program.

“Continuity gives you an opportunity to kind of push a little farther down the road,” he said. “To go a little deeper with how you play and what you do and have a little bit longer frame of reference. So I love coaching guys multiple years. You get to really explore some space. And hopefully that is a natural consequence of running the program great.”

So far, he’s off to a good start.

“I think retention is a win,” Pope said. “If you have guys that feel the program and want to stay and want to grow, I think that’s a real win.”

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