As UcM noted, it's the conference play that's killing KY so far in their 10 SEC games. Last year they outscored conference opponents by almost 14 points, and this year is about 2.5 points. Except for a conference opener that was a blowout over Alabama, all of the games have been settled by 10 or less points, and KY has lost two games by 2 points.
The Wildcats played pretty much the same OOC as last year, a decent mix of elite and very good teams along with some turkeys. Both years they had one OOC loss, last year to Baylor and this year to Duke, but this year their OOC stats were actually better than last year's. It's a combination in conference of the Wildcats scoring a lot less (7 points) than last year and opponents scoring more (almost 4 points). The FG% in the ten games is way down, and though SEC opponents shot a little better than KY last year, KY had 13 more shots per game while this year it's only 4 more. Also important and a related stat is that KY is getting only 8 steals a game to the opponent's 7, whereas last year the average was 11 to the opponent's 6.4. So they just haven't had as much dread in them.
The reason for the lack of dread can be pretty much traced to the loss of one key player, their graduated top scorer and only good 3-pt shooter A'dia Mathies. She was able to stretch out opponent's defenses and scored 6 more points a game than any other Wildcat. They have not replaced her scoring, and opponents are daring the Wildcats to shoot from the outside. KY is taking 31% of their shots from beyond the arc (UConn takes 24%) but are connecting at a 30% rate, down from last season's 34.5%.
That's the story, and again all figures are for conference play, where KY is 5-5.