Kentucky rises in final AP and Coaches Top 25 Polls

The Wildcats narrowly miss out on a top-10 finish.

By Jason Marcum@marcum89 Updated Jan 8, 2019, 2:16pm EST

NCAA Football: Citrus Bowl-Kentucky vs Penn State

The final AP Top 25 Poll is out, and the Kentucky Wildcats got one final bump.

Thanks to a win over Penn State and several losses by teams also in the top 15, Kentucky moved up to the No. 12 spot, just narrowly missing out on a top 10 finish after going 10-3.

As you can imagine, national champion Clemson finished No. 1 after dominating Alabama in the title game. Six SEC teams finished in the top 25.

Kentucky’s best win of the season ended up being at Florida, as the Gators finished in a tie with Georgia for the seventh-best team in the final poll.

All in all, this was a very special season for the Wildcats that won’t soon be forgotten. Hopefully, Mark Stoops and his staff are around for many years to come and can have another team that wins 10 games, though it will be hard to ever replicate what this team was able to accomplish.