SEC logoThe past three men's basketball games for the Tennessee Volunteers have produced a comeback win over Kentucky, a lopsided loss to Arkansas and a hammering of Auburn.
Arkansas followed Saturday night's 18-point victory over the Vols with a 32-point loss Tuesday night to Mississippi State, which is currently tied for 12th in the Southeastern Conference with Auburn, which is struggling but topped Kentucky.
No SEC team this winter seems too far away from an excellent performance or a disastrous showing save Missouri, which finished in the league cellar last year with a 3-15 conference mark and is headed there again with 10 losses in 11 games. The 13 other programs have been dealing with fleeting highs and lows.
"Every team is different, and we all have our different woes to deal with," Tennessee first-year coach Rick Barnes said this week. "In our situation, we really don't have a post game that we can throw the ball into in order to stop the bleeding when we're not shooting the ball well, but when you go back and look, when we're not playing well, it's because we've just been really bad on defense.
"It baffles me how we can do some things well and then the very next game not do them well. I wish I could figure that out before a game starts."
Florida ran the 18-game conference table in 2014 and Kentucky did the same last year, but erratic play throughout the SEC has resulted in Kentucky, LSU and South Carolina taking 8-3 conference marks into this weekend. Florida and Texas A&M are right behind the league-leading trio with 7-4 records.
Home-court advantage has factored into the wide-ranging outcomes, with SEC teams winning 75.3 percent of their league games in their own arenas. All 14 members have better league records at home compared to on the road, whereas only six had better home records last season, when SEC teams won just 53.2 percent of their home league games.
"I've heard that the home team in our league wins the highest percentage of games of any league in the country, so make of that what you will," Vanderbilt's Kevin Stallings said. "It's a tough league with tough places to play, and I don't know if the inconsistency thing is just for us. You can look around at a lot of places and see some inconsistency of teams, but that doesn't keep us from fighting to want to achieve (consistency)."
Despite the wide-ranging outcomes to this point, there are some sensible aspects to this year's race. Florida and Kentucky have evenly split the past six SEC regular-season championships and are in the thick of things this time around, while South Carolina and Texas A&M are putting their experienced rosters to use.
LSU has the league's most talented player, 6-foot-10 freshman Ben Simmons, and briefly had the league lead to itself before Wednesday night's loss at South Carolina.
"Our team has grown since the beginning of the season," LSU coach Johnny Jones said. "We were without two of our primary starters right now - one because of injury (Keith Hornsby) and one because of eligibility (Craig Victor) - and since those guys have been back, it's really helped us in a big way. We know there are challenges out there, and we've got to keep battling."
Rebels still adjusting
Ole Miss has the unique experience this season of having played its November and December home schedule at Tad Smith Coliseum and its home conference schedule at "The Pavilion at Ole Miss," which seats 9,500 and came with a $96.5 million price tag.
"It's a real game-changer for us, and we're still getting acclimated with making the transition just a few weeks ago," said coach Andy Kennedy, who has been with the Rebels since 2006. "It's surreal for me, because it feels like I've taken another job. Everything has just totally changed from the dynamics of the game-day experience and the excitement of our fan base."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.