Monday afternoon notes: Rankings update, new Bracketology and more UK love

Kentucky continues to hold on to the top spot in both major polls but just can’t seem to grab on to the final two votes in the Associated Press Top 25.

The Wildcats earned a unanimous selection in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll for the third straight week and picked up 63 of the 65 first-place votes in the AP Top 25.

The top five is Kentucky, Syracuse, Missouri, Kansas and Duke in the AP Top 25 and Kentucky, Syracuse, Missouri, Duke and Kansas in the Coaches’ Poll.

You can view the full rankings here.

The Wildcats wouldn’t give up their No. 1 ranking for anything, but as we all know, all that matters at the beginning of March is grabbing one of those coveted No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.

Obviously UK has a pretty strong hold on that, but the Cats don’t receive a very favorable draw in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology.

Lunardi continues to project the Cats to play in Louisville for the second and third rounds, but the No. 8 and 9 seeds UK could potentially face in the third round are tough matchups. Lunardi has Memphis and Connecticut across from Kentucky, two of the most athletic teams in the country.

Not only that, UConn, despite its recent struggles, was a preseason national title contender and ranked in the top five. Obviously the Huskies won last season’s national championship, and it’s essentially the same team as last year, minus Kemba Walker but with Andre Drummond.

Lunardi still lists Syracuse as the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament over Kentucky.

The national media continues to shower praise on the 25-1 Wildcats following another impressive performance.

Myron Medcalf from ESPN has jumped on the national title favorite bandwagon and pronounced Kentucky the team to beat in his latest column:

College basketball history suggests that premature predictions about the Final Four — especially four weeks prior to Selection Sunday — often end with embarrassment.

We never saw UConn coming last year. We didn’t think VCU belonged in the field. And who really believed in Butler entering last season’s NCAA tournament?

But there’s no denying Kentucky’s current standing as the front-runner for this season’s national championship. And until there’s a reason to think otherwise, I will assume that Kentucky will wind up in New Orleans for the season’s final chapter.

Perhaps the Wildcats will suffer an early, unexpected loss in March Madness. Maybe their youth will suddenly become a burden.

But their valiant effort at Vanderbilt on Saturday night — and so many before that performance — continued to elevate them above the nation’s other contenders.

And ESPN colleague Andy Katz says that freshman forward Anthony Davis should now be the front runner for National Player of the Year:

Kansas’ Thomas Robinson deserves all the adulation he has received for what he has done to this point in his career and this season for the Jayhawks. But no player changes the game the way Davis has in the SEC this season. He should be the SEC player of the year and at the very least a runner-up if he’s not the choice for national player of the year.

A couple of days ago we brought you footage of Kentucky signee Archie Goodwin’s ridiculous, between-the-legs dunk in a high school game. Now there’s an interview with Goodwin about his decision to come to Kentucky made available by a local TV station in Arkansas:

Blogs