This season is going to be a game of cat and mouse.

Coming off a loss from rival Indiana University in the round of 32 in the 2016 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the Kentucky Wildcats have started their off season red-hot.

So far, Kentucky has shown a powerful defense, good offensive shooting and a supportive backcourt. The key players seem to be the Malik monk and De’Aaron Fox due to their great leadership skills. The Wildcats’ future is looking good for them, potentially getting them another national championship.

This season, half of the team stayed from last year, including Isaiah Briscoe and Derek Willis. The Wildcats also recruited four McDonald’s All-American players, who are Edrice “Bam” Adebayo, Monk,  Fox and Sacha Killeya-Jones. The McDonald’s All-American Game is the all-star basketball games played each year for American and Canadian boys’ high-school basketball graduates.

Kentucky played two exhibition games (excluding the Big Blue Madness and Blue-White Scrimmage games), who were against Clarion and Asbury Universities. Kentucky outscored them by a total of 150 points. As of now, the Wildcats’ record is 7-1. Their most challenging matchup was against 11 ranked UCLA on Saturday, December 3. Kentucky could not get anything to go for them. The Bruins had an amazing offense, scoring 97 points, which is the most points allowed on Kentucky under the coach of John Calipari.

The key players for the team this year have shown their skills already out of the gates. Point guard  Fox and shooting guard Monk look to have a dominant season together. Together, over the span of eight games, they have an average combined points of 34.5. “De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk are a once-in-a-generation backcourt, as freshmen,” said Jay Bilas, ESPN sports analyst, in an interview with Kyle Tucker.

On November 28, in the game against Arizona State, Fox even achieved a triple double. A triple double is where a player has double digit numbers in three different statistics. In this case, Fox scored 14 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists. He is the second player in the history of University of Kentucky basketball to ever accomplish this, the other being Chris Mills in 1988.

But, the veterans of the team cannot be forgotten about either. Some of the main players who have returned to play another year are Briscoe, Willis, Dominique Hawkins, and Mychal Mulder.  In the offseason, Briscoe stayed hours in the gym practicing his free-throw shots in order to help bring up his free throw percentage last year, which was 46 percent. Mulder has improved on his jump shot, particularly the three pointer. Willis has become a better rebounder, while Hawkins has been trying to improve his driving skills (into the lane of traffic).

Looking at the rest of their schedule, Kentucky looks to have a pretty smooth sailing season. Although, they will be in some tough matchups, those of who include 3 ranked North Carolina, 14 ranked rival Louisville away, and 4 ranked Kansas. This still does not mean the Wildcats will lose.

Their next game is a home game against unranked Valparaiso on Wednesday, December 7 at 8 p.m. ET. They will be coming out of the locker room fired up and ready for anything after the stunning loss to UCLA in the previous game.

The Cats have a great chance to win the SEC (Southeastern Conference) Championship due to the fact there is no one in their conference to even compete with them by the looks of their gameplay so far. But when March Madness comes around, nobody knows what is bound to happen. Kentucky is a team with good contenders and is championship worthy.

After AP (the Associated Press) changes the rankings on Monday, December 5, the Wildcats will not hold the No. 1 spot anymore. That does not matter because they will get their groove back and come out with a vengeance. “There are great lessons out of this. I wish we would have come back and won. I would have liked to learn from that lesson a little bit more. But sometimes you need to get hit on the chin, especially at home,’’ said Head Coach, John Calipari, in a press conference after the loss to UCLA.