A top-heavy basketball league will face a balanced basketball league Saturday in the seventh annual Big 12/SEC Challenge.
The Big 12 has three of the top 10 teams in the latest NET rankings – No. 2 Baylor, No. 3 Kansas and No. 7 West Virginia – while Auburn is the highest-ranked Southeastern Conference program at No. 19. Yet the SEC has six teams ranked among the top 40, which is two more than the Big 12 possesses.
“I don’t think we’re quite as strong this year at the top of our league, but the middle of our league is much, much better,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said Thursday afternoon. “I don’t know how many of our teams are or are not getting in (the NCAA tournament), but we’ve got some great nonconference wins and this Big 12/SEC Challenge will be another important barometer. The better we do in this, the better chance we have of advancing more teams into the tournament.”
The SEC has just one triumph in this 10-game event against the Big 12, posting a 6-4 record in 2018. The Big 12 won six of the matchups last January, when Iowa State’s 87-73 victory at Ole Miss marked the only win for a road team.
Tennessee defeated visiting West Virginia 83-66 in last year’s Big 12/SEC Challenge, which marked the 14th consecutive victory for the top-ranked Volunteers.