CBS Sports' Matt Norlander rips Kentucky: 'the most overpaid, overrated and disappointing team in college basketball'

Matt Norlander of CBS Sports covers and follows men’s college basketball about as well as anyone in the national media. He, like most fans of the sport, was paying close attention to Friday night’s game in Nashville between No. 18 Kentucky and No. 11 Gonzaga. As someone who had the Wildcats ranked highly going into the 2025-26 season, he’s just as shocked as the Big Blue Nation that Mark Pope‘s team is struggling this badly through eight games.

“It’s completely unacceptable, obviously, for every single Kentucky fan,” Norlander said on the KSR postgame show with Ryan Lemond and Billy Rutledge. “I did tweet it earlier tonight. I tweeted it because I meant it: Kentucky is the most overpaid, overrated, disappointing team in college basketball through the first five weeks of the season.

“It doesn’t have to go this way. We don’t have to get to February and that is still the case. But it is very much the case right now.”

Five weeks in, it is not up for debate: Kentucky is the most overpaid, overrated and disappointing team in college basketball.

Mark Pope has a massive mess on his hands. How will he fix it? pic.twitter.com/HUQn6JvdJe

— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) December 6, 2025

Norlander mentioned the injuries to Kentucky’s roster, which has to be brought up when so many of the missing players would consume significant minutes if healthy. It’s going to take some time for Jaland Lowe to find his groove again after playing on Friday for the first time in nearly a month. But that’s proving to be hardly the biggest issue.

“They lack real aggressiveness, they lack real heart,” Norlander said of the Wildcats. “They don’t have a collective identity.”

Kentucky (5-4) has stacked five wins this season against bad teams. Norlander pointed out that none of UK’s blowout victories have come against teams ranked better than 195th in KenPom. The four losses have all come against quality NCAA Tournament teams. The last two wins were against Loyola (MD) and Tennessee Tech, which rank outside the top 300 in KenPom.

Billy brought up the reports of Kentucky’s roster being worth $22 million, which Norlander pushed back on slightly, saying he believes the actual number was closer to $20 million. But the point remains: “The entire roster is proving to be overpaid at this point,” Norlander said. “Vastly. Just dramatically so.” UK coaches have not exactly pushed back on that number being so high, either.

Norlander does believe that Pope can eventually turn this around and that something would have to be “catastrophically awful” for him to lose his job before year four in Lexington. But he does question if Pope will be able to do that. In the meantime, we can only look ahead to Tuesday’s game back in Rupp Arena against North Carolina Central.

The vibes are very low right now within the Big Blue Nation…