The Southeastern Conference has one men's basketball team - Kentucky, who else? - ranked in this week's Associated Press Top 25, but the league is quite active on the projected NCAA tournament bubble.
ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi has six SEC teams pegged in his latest 68-team field, with Vanderbilt projected as a No. 11 seed and having to play in one of the four early games in Dayton, Ohio. Alabama is listed as Lunardi's first team outside the NCAA tournament, so the SEC has a chance of sending seven representatives for the first time in its history.
"We don't talk about that too much, because we can't control what that bubble looks like," Vandy coach Kevin Stallings said Monday. "I know it's a thing of great interest to fans, but it's not something we can control. We try to deal as much as we can in things we can control, and that's how well we prepare today to play a good game tomorrow."
Three weeks remain in the SEC's regular season, with each team having to play six more times before the conference tournament at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena.
Stallings' Commodores improved to 15-10 overall and 7-5 in SEC play with Saturday's 86-57 road shellacking of Auburn, which continued their rebounding from an 0-3 league start. Vanderbilt is not the hottest league team in NCAA bubble territory, however, with that distinction going to Alabama.
Avery Johnson's Crimson Tide (15-9, 6-6) won their fifth game in six tries Saturday night with a 61-55 upset at Florida, their first triumph in Gainesville since 1995.
"When we came in, we didn't have any unrealistic expectations for our team," Johnson said. "We returned a guy who averaged eight points last year and a couple of other guys who had minutes that were pretty sporadic, and we combined that with a bunch of freshmen, so we never talked about the (NCAA) tournament. We talked about coming in and laying a foundation for our program and seeing if we could get better as the season went on.
"Nobody expected us to be in this conversation, let alone make the tournament, and we still won't talk about it. We'll let all that stuff take care of itself, and if we're fortunate to make it at the end of the season, we'll definitely take it, but that would be a significant overachievement for our team."
Lunardi has No. 14 Kentucky (19-6, 9-3) and Texas A&M (18-7, 7-5) projected as NCAA tournament 4 seeds, but Billy Kennedy's Aggies have lost five straight SEC games after a 7-0 league start. LSU (16-9, 9-3) and South Carolina (21-4, 8-4) are 7 seeds, so they are not quite locked into March Madness just yet, while Florida is a 9 seed and in danger of sliding.
Mike White's Gators are 16-9 overall and 7-5 in SEC play, but they are 1-4 on the road in league play with a game tonight at Georgia and a game Saturday at South Carolina.
"What you try and do in this league is steal a few on the road, and that's what just happened to us," White said. "We have a very difficult week ahead of us. Georgia has one of the better backcourts that we'll face all year, and Yante Maten is arguably the most improved player in our league.
"It's a huge challenge, and we just hope we're in striking distance to have a chance. Our last road game was at Kentucky, and it wasn't real pretty."
The SEC last had six NCAA tournament representatives in 2008, which was the ninth time the league accomplished that feat.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.