The NCAA men’s basketball tournament begins three weeks from today in Dayton, Ohio, with the start of the First Four play-in games. If ESPN brackets guru Joe Lunardi is as accurate as usual, the Southeastern Conference will place a record (for the SEC, anyway) eight teams in the field.
But even now the league seems to be held to a different standard than other Power Five conferences and the Big East. Merely consider this recent observation from ESPN basketball writer Jeff Borzello:
“The SEC is shaping up as the selection committee’s biggest quandary heading into the final stretch of the regular season. The league is as deep as any in the country, with 11 teams within touching distance of the bubble or the NCAA tournament. All 14 teams are in the top 100 at KenPom, 11 teams are in the top 75 of the RPI and 13 are in the top 100 of the BPI.
“But here’s where it gets difficult … most of the at-large contenders in the SEC have built up their résumés almost exclusively by beating SEC teams (and West Virginia and Oklahoma, for whatever reason) … Deep conferences should benefit several at-large contenders. But what if the committee doesn’t view the SEC as highly as some of the metrics do? If it views the league as one with no national championship contender and just a large group of middle-of-the-pack teams, seedings and number of bids could differ greatly than in rankings and projected brackets.”
Let us begin by revisiting the last few seasons. In 2014, half the Final Four was made up of the SEC: Florida and Kentucky. In 2015 the national champion favorite for much of the year was Kentucky, which reached the Final Four. A year ago, three of the Elite Eight teams hailed from the SEC – South Carolina, Florida and Kentucky – with the Gamecocks knocking off the Gators in the East Regional final and UK falling by two points to eventual national champ North Carolina on a last-second shot.
So on history alone – not that the selection committee says it goes on history – the league has proved itself to be pretty good in the recent past. But let’s momentarily forget history or its inclination to repeat.
Let’s start with this year and South Carolina – which has been one of the weaker teams in the league for much of the season – knocking off Wofford by 21 points in November before the Terriers beat North Carolina in Chapel Hill in December.
Or Tennessee, which has lost two of its last three league games by an average of 20 points and five conference contests total. The Volunteers have beaten Purdue, North Carolina State, Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, played Villanova tough and won by 23 at Iowa State in the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
Let’s examine Arkansas, the lowest of SEC seeds at a No. 10, according to Lunardi. The Razorbacks own an early win over Oklahoma when that was still something special and a Big 12/SEC Challenge victory over Oklahoma State a week before the Cowboys won at potential No. 1 seed Kansas and two weeks before they won at West Virginia.
Then there’s Florida. The Gators may be the toughest team to figure out in the SEC, having lost five of their last seven league games after a 7-1 SEC start. But they also whipped Baylor by 21 in Gainesville at the end of January and the Bears have won five of six since then, including pounding Kansas in Waco.
The point is, this league’s middle-of-the-pack teams have delivered some pretty big haymakers outside the conference.
Does this mean the SEC deserves more than eight teams, or even eight teams? Not really. But what league does? If you can’t finish in the top half of your conference, do you really need to compete for a national championship?
And Borzello, an outstanding writer and reporter, can certainly pull out some games that can embarrass the conference. Alabama’s loss to Central Florida, for instance. Or the Gators’ head-scratcher against Loyola-Chicago. Or Georgia’s loss at Massachusetts.
But something South Carolina coach Frank Martin said on Monday’s SEC teleconference seethes and simmers inside the guts of all 14 league coaches this time of year.
“Winning on the road is hard, and it’s no different from what happens in every other league in the country,” Martin said. “For whatever reason, in this league everybody (meaning national experts) looks at it like it’s not supposed to happen.”
He’s right. When this happens in the ACC, Big 12 or Big Ten, it’s because everybody’s supposedly great. Why can’t in this season of all seasons the same be said for the SEC, especially given that 6-4 record in the Big 12/SEC Challenge?
The problem with the SEC isn’t that there are a bunch of middle-of-the-pack teams only. The problem is there are a bunch of pretty darn good teams that are all capable of doing damage in the NCAA tourney if given a chance.
If the selection committee can’t see that, it needs a new pair of evaluation glasses.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.