Kentucky’s first-round opponent could be a very bad matchup for the Wildcats. Here’s why.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of rhyme or reason to this Kentucky basketball season.

One game, the Wildcats look like they can beat anyone in the country. The next, they look like they don’t belong in the NCAA Tournament at all. That was the case from the beginning of the 2022-23 season — which UK started at No. 4 in the AP Top 25 rankings — all the way to last week’s Southeastern Conference Tournament, where an NIT-bound Vanderbilt team beat the Cats for the second time in nine days.

In between, a whole bunch of basketball that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But there’s at least one stat that appears to tell us who these Wildcats really are. And if that stat holds when the NCAA Tournament begins later this week, it’ll be another short March Madness for John Calipari’s team.

So far this season, Kentucky has struggled mightily against opponents with elite offenses and found ways to win against teams that are typically great on defense.

The bad news for the Cats? Their first-round opponent is Providence, and the Friars have an elite offense.

As of Sunday evening, Providence was rated 16th nationally in offensive efficiency, according to KenPom. One key for the Friars on that end is a 35.2 offensive rebound rate, which also ranks 16th in the country. Their star, former Kentucky player Bryce Hopkins, leads the team in points (16.1) and rebounds (8.5) and shoots 76.3 percent on free throws and 37.8 percent on threes. The Friars as a whole are 24th nationally in free throw attempts per game and shoot 74.5 percent at the line. They’re not great on defense (108th nationally, per KenPom), but they find ways to score.

And teams that find ways to score have given Kentucky some problems this season.

UK has played seven games against opponents ranked in the top 25 in KenPom offensive efficiency. The Cats have a 1-6 record in those games, with losses to Gonzaga, Missouri, Alabama, Vanderbilt (twice) and UCLA. The lone win came over Vandy, which scored just 53 points on that night in late January.

Meanwhile, Kentucky is 20-5 in games against everyone else, including seven wins over teams ranked in the top 30 in defensive efficiency by KenPom.

UK’s offense, for all of the criticism early in the season, has generally been effective, thanks in part to the team’s high level of offensive rebounding (second-best in the country, behind UConn). But the Cats’ defense has not been good — downright horrid, by Calipari standards.

The Cats go into NCAA Tournament time with the nation’s No. 71 defense, according to KenPom. UK’s worst showing in Calipari’s previous 13 seasons was 88th nationally in 2013, when Nerlens Noel was lost to injury and Kentucky ended up in the NIT. The second-worst finish in that stat — before this season — was 52nd nationally (in 2020), and those are the only two times in the past 13 years that the Cats have been worse than 40th in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency. (They’ve finished in the top 10 five times under Calipari.)

Simply watching the games tells the story. UK struggles to defend opponents on the perimeter, the Cats have no true rim-protectors to deter driving players, and their star, Oscar Tshiebwe, has often been successfully isolated by opposing coaches.

There have been flashes of improvement and signs of more connectivity on defense, but the problems that have plagued Kentucky all season were on full display just last week in the loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals.

The Commodores seemingly got to the rim at will. And they made seven threes in the first half.

“Early in the game, it was shooting layups,” Calipari said of the breakdowns. “We talked about it at halftime. They were a little quicker. We were trying to give space, but we didn’t want to give angles. And we gave angles up.”

A repeat performance Friday night might be met with an early trip back to Lexington.

Some good news for the Wildcats …

KenPom does project Kentucky to be a winner over the Friars, but just barely. The website predicts a 75-73 win for the Cats and a 57 percent likelihood of victory.

And if UK can survive Providence, it would most likely face 3-seeded Kansas State in the second round. The Big 12 Wildcats are No. 52 nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, the worst number — by a large margin — of any top-3 seed in the field. (The other 11 teams in the 1-2-3 seed range are all top 30 in that stat.)

So, a win over Providence could set up about as good of a 3 vs. 6 matchup that Kentucky could hope for in round two. Win that one, and the Wildcats would move on to the Sweet 16 in New York, where a matchup with 2-seeded Marquette (and the nation’s No. 8 offense) could await.

But Kentucky will have to get past the Friars first.

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