With Kentucky's loss to Vandy last night combined with Florida's loss last Saturday to Georgia, you would think that Tennessee or South Carolina would take advantage of the situation and separate themselves from the pack in the SEC East. That wasn't the case tonight as both teams went down to the Mississippi schools. So, the SEC East is back to four teams tied at the top at 7-4 as Florida beat Bama tonight. Who knows who is going to win this thing? Does any team even want it?
Same for the Irish. After the big upset of Louisville and beating South Fla the Irish were seemingly poised for an end of season run that could have put them back into the NCAA picture. But the loss last night at WVA put a screaching halt to that. At Texas were are now a bubble team most likely. We had a bad loss to Texas A&M and given that the B12 is unlikely to get more than 4 invites we are right now the 5th team. Of course we can still get back in with a good finish and a nice run in the B12 tournament.
I have a question for you SEC guys. We run the B12 basketball different from football. We don't have divisions, there is one conference standing. The schedule is made up based on the football divisions, so that you play each team in your football division home/home and each team in the opposite division 1 time, alternating home/home every other year. That makes a lot of sense to me, rather than the split into East/West like you guys in the SEC. What do you think? Big East also no longer does the division deal, either. In fact I don't think any other conference does divisions in basketball, I could be wrong though.
Terry, We do the exact same thing. Tennessee plays the other five in the East twice each year and all six in the West once. There is only one SEC champ at the end of the regular season and one SEC Tourney champ. We are all talking about a 4 way tie for the SEC East but the real topic of conversation should be that LSU is standing head and shoulders above the rest of the SEC right now for the regular season title.
Terry, as I understand it, the SEC divisional format in basketball serves no purpose except for seeding in the SEC tournament. Teams play conference games in a similar fashion to you guys in the Big 12 but, at tourney time, the teams are seeded according to their division, with an Eastern #1 seed, 2 seed, and so forth and a West #1, 2, etc. That is the way I understand the purposes for the divisional format in SEC basketball. Perhaps, one of the other guys can correct me if I'm wrong. In effect, the regular season championship is somewhat useless anyway considering the fact that the tourney winner is the team that gets the automatic bid to the NCAAs. You get to hang a banner and virtually assure yourself an at-large bid to the Big Dance but that's about it.
Right or wrong I always consider the SEC regular season champion the real champion. Georgia last year....SEC BB Champ? Nope....not for me.
After a night of losing our internet because of lightning and then me being sick all night, it's great to be back online and out of bed. If you look at the SEC standings it is by division and the seeds are division driven with the two top teams in both divisions getting byes and then arranged after that by order of divisions. However every team plays a team in the opposite division first day. So in that sense it's one tournament, in other words they don't have a bracket for each division and the two winners play, it can, and has, ended up with a final having two teams from the same division. So I guess the answer is yes and no! Because our standings are separated until the tournament starts.
The SEC East is a mess right now, having a four way tie. Tennessee is an enigma to me. They have played lights out against Florida the last three years but then lose games that leave you scratching your head. Of course the Gator loss to Georgia had me scratching my head so hard I almost dug to my brain. Maybe that's the reason I got sick last night, a basketball brain fart!