With four games tonight and three Wednesday, the Southeastern Conference will reach the midway mark of its league schedule in men’s basketball.
The conference is coming off Saturday’s triumph in the Big 12/SEC Challenge, when the SEC clinched six wins in the 10-game extravaganza with Kentucky’s 83-76 comeback victory at West Virginia. While that challenge was taking place, Auburn was routing LSU 95-70 to maintain its lead in the conference chase.
Bruce Pearl’s Tigers, who were picked to finish ninth in the league and are down two former starters and former assistant coach Chuck Person as the result of an ongoing federal investigation, improved to 19-2 overall and 7-1 in SEC play. It’s the best start for Auburn since the 1998-99 season, when Cliff Ellis had a 20-1 team that wound up 29-4 and the program’s lone No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
“We’re one game in front, but we’re probably two games out of fifth or sixth place,” Pearl said Saturday night in a news conference. “To put up a number like this against an LSU team with five top-50 wins is good, but we’ve got to keep trying to get better. We’ll just keep putting challenges out there to stay humble and hungry.”
In a league without an Associated Press top-10 representative yet without a weak link, five programs – Auburn, Florida, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee – have begun to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. They have the top five records in conference play and are potential threats to not only reach the NCAA tournament but advance to the second weekend, especially given the performances of Florida, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee against their Big 12 counterparts this past weekend.