Going into the 2020 calendar year we had a pretty good idea of where most Kentucky sports were.

John Calipari was chugging along with Elite Eights if not Final Fours, Mark Stoops had taken Kentucky to four straight bowl games, and Matthew Mitchell had another quality women's team.

Things look very different for Kentucky going into 2021.

That's not to say the situation is dire for Kentucky athletics. Athletics director Mitch Barnhart has certainly raised the overall level of performance from the university's athletics teams as a whole and also in the sports that most fans are interested in.

Financially, UK has been in as good a situation as ever before, and looks to make it through COVID-19 without the worst case scenarios coming to pass.

Basketball can't be written off as a factor nationally beyond this season, football still has more talent moving forward than in most previous seasons in the modern era, and women's hoops is still ranked.

But things are different now. There's much more uncertainty across the board in the school's most popular sports.

Let's start with basketball.

For the first time in his entire tenure in Lexington, Calipari is encountering a rather fierce form of criticism from the fan base and not only from the extreme fringes. His 2012-13 team failed to make the NCAA tournament after Nerlens Noel went down with a season-ending injury, but Calipari was one year removed from a national championship and he followed that season with a magical and improbable run to the national final the next year.

Does Calipari have another rebound story in him? Can he work some magic and make something of this season? Or will the struggles of Terrence Clarke, BJ Boston, and Olivier Sarr make it harder to recruit, and will there be still more roster turnover in spite of the big struggles?

Kentucky basketball hasn't been in a position this precarious in almost a dozen seasons.

On the football side, Mark Stoops isn't catching much heat. He's about to coach in Kentucky's fifth consecutive bowl game and he's shooting for three postseason wins in a row.

The 2020 regular season had to be something of a disappointment with the 'Cats finishing under .500, but it was a brutal schedule and no team in the country encountered more adversity.

But as with basketball there's much more uncertainty going into 2021.

We don't know who the quarterback of the program is going to be. Joey Gatewood or Beau Allen? We don't know how Liam Coen will fare in his first year as Kentucky's offensive coordinator. He's not even in Lexington yet.

We don't know how much the receivers will improve. We don't know how Kentucky will replace almost its whole offensive line, which has been among the best in school history in recent seasons. There will be Eric Wolford instead of John Schlarman coaching Kentucky's offensive line.

There are defensive losses, special teams losses, and who knows how the transfer portal situation will shake out?

Every college football program in the nation is in uncharted waters right now with the challenges presented by COVID-19, but Kentucky will be attempting to reinvent itself in the midst of a successful stretch for the program.

The women's basketball program has a new head coach. Matthew Mitchell unexpectedly stepped down after some serious health issues and Kyra Elzy was initially given the interim tag before being named Kentucky's permanent head coach almost two months ago.

Elzy is respected for her recruiting prowess and long track record as an assistant coach at Kentucky under Mitchell during two separate stints, but replacing him comes with its own set of questions and challenges.

Mitchell went 281-125 as Kentucky's head coach from 2007-2020, posting a .633 win clip in SEC games, finishing in the top half of the league 11 times, winning one league championship and reaching the Elite Eight three times.

So far Elzy seems to be doing well in her new role as permanent head coach. The Wildcats are in the Top-15 nationally.

Kentucky's baseball team is probably at a crossroads under head coach Nick Mingione.

The Mingione era started out on a promising note with the Wildcats posting a 43-23 record (19-11 SEC) and hosting an NCAA Super Regional in 2017, but it has been all downhill since then.

The Wildcats were 32-22 (13-17 SEC) in Mingione's second year, below .500 at 26-29 (7-23 SEC) in his third year, and were 11-6 before conference play until COVID-19 cancelled the baseball season.

Just about every baseball coach got a free pass with the season being cancelled in 2020, but Mingione will be coaching for his job in '21. The program will have to show that it's moving back in the right direction or Mitch Barnhart will very likely have to set a new course for the program. Mingione's seat is as hot as any coach's in the nation.

Kentucky even has a relatively new cheerleading coach overseeing one of the most dominant programs in all of college sports, with Ryan Martin O'Connor replacing the entire staff that served before her following an investigation.

It would be incorrect to say Kentucky's athletics programs are struggling as a whole. There's still plenty of reason for fans to believe their beloved teams will be competitive in different seasons of the year.

But we know a lot less going into this year than we probably thought we did 12 months ago.