ESPN BPI thinks Kentucky will just barely lose to Clemson in basketball.

ESPN uses a design algorithm to guess which games will happen. This algorithm changes as the season goes on and ESPN has more data to work with. It hasn’t done well with Kentucky so far this year, even though they have a new teaching staff and team. The report said that Duke would easily beat Kentucky. Some of the other low-level games were closer than it said they would be, and now it says they will lose to Clemson. Not really.

As was already said, the analytics have slowly been catching up with Kentucky’s play, skill, and ability to win, and what used to be a bigger edge for Clemson has been washed away. It now only thinks Clemson will win 50.2% of the time. That’s pretty much a coin flip. The point difference that is expected is 0.1. This isn’t a real score because in basketball you can’t score percentage points. But that just shows how close it will be. The computer doesn’t think the Tigers have much of an edge.

Where does that have an edge? Kent State is in the top 10 and could even be in the top 5 when the new AP poll comes out tomorrow. Clemson is not ranked, but they are 7-1 on the year and have played good basketball. The simulations show that the difference is that Clemson has the home court edge. Since the spot is neutral, the game is likely to be in Kentucky. It would be a must-win for the Wildcats if it happened in Rupp Arena.

The game gets a good score of 92.4 from ESPN BPI.

This is the best game of the day. Only Duke vs. Auburn, Alabama vs. North Carolina, and Baylor vs. UCONN have better grades for the whole week. UK plays Gonzaga after their game against Clemson. That game is already rated as one of the best of the season for UK (96.3), but we’ll talk more about that later this week.

We know for sure that it will be the first real road test in Kentucky. The people will be against Kentucky, so it will be a great game for them to learn what they’re made of when the crowd is against them. The good news is that most of the players are veterans and have played in games like this before.