We are just one sleep away from Kentucky basketball playing meaningful basketball games and the anticipation is palpable. With a star-studded freshman class full of household names, this might be the most anticipated season since the Bam-Fox-Monk year back in the fall of 2016.

Between legacy players like DJ Wagner and Reed Sheppard, key returners like Antonio Reeves, five-star lottery projections like Justin Edwards, and shifty playmakers like Rob Dillingham, this team has all the makeup to be the comeback year that puts Kentucky back in the upper echelon of college basketball. It even features a player in Zvonimir Ivisic who was the target of a freedom campaign that looks to be much more successful than the Enes version back in 2011.

In addition to all of the on-paper reasons to be excited, Big Blue Nation has on-court reasons to be amped as well. Fans got a sneak peek of this team over the summer in Canada, and their display of modern basketball was a refreshing glimpse that new assistant coach John Welch might pull Kentucky’s offense into this decade.

And this is all before Kentucky gets its lottery-projected seven-footer, Aaron Bradshaw, back in a few weeks to provide rim protection, one of the few lacking strengths of this team.

On the eve of the start of the regular season, the social media crew in the Athletics department dropped a new hype video to get everyone even more excited for the team’s first real game of the 2023-24 campaign with the simple caption, “Enough talking. Let’s ball.”

The ‘Cats play the New Mexico State on Monday at 7:00 p.m. in Rupp Arena. Let’s ball.