Amazing how quickly the tide turned. Always had some decent veteran coaches (Pearl, Cal, Barnes), but it seems like NIL cash + portal ravaging of good mid majors + turnover at UNC/Duke + innovative new guys (Oates, Golden) have elevated talent and competition massively. Very fun to watch, but also relatively brutal, haha.
Ha yes it's not entirely unlike playing football in the SEC, lots of talented teams and fun games to watch but also difficult to win, especially on the road. Unlike football though, the rest of the country is a little slow to catch on to just how good this conference is in basketball and not giving the correct SoS IMO, especially for teams with younger talent who get better as the season progresses. As for us, we are playing much better than a bubble team or even 8 seed right now, we just need to keep improving and make some noise in the postseason, then it will all take care of itself.
Listening to the UT @ TAMU game last night one of the announcers (Dykes?) said that the Big12 was more top heavy than the SEC but the SEC has more depth. Has he seen Mizzou and Vandy this year? Nobody in the Big 12 is that bad. Maybe the middle of the SEC is better than the middle of the Big 12. Sad how Mizzou and Vandy have fallen. Before they were in the SEC Norm Stewart coached some really good Mizzou teams and the Cuonzo Martin teams were a tough nut. Vandy was always at least good with C M Newton, van Breda Kolff and even that weasel Eddie Fogler running the show.
Yes I guess it depends how much depth we're talking about. I think both Mizzou and Vandy, especially Vandy, have too much tradition to stay this bad for long. Memorial is still one of the best basketball venues in the NCAA, such a unique place to play.
The thing about Mizzou is, the SEC invited them to join because we thought they would elevate SEC basketball. They had a strong program, then tanked immediately after joining, and have never looked the same since.
It seems like the year they joined or maybe year before they were a 2 seed and got beat in the first round by a 15. It's been downhill ever since for that program.
Still have a lot of games to play and need to beat the teams we're better than. (I'm Captain Obvious here!). But the chemistry seems to be getting better, the defense is improving and with Kugel adapting to his role on the team and playing like he has of late, we can be competitive with anybody. I like the direction of the program. Just think how high we would be ranked if we had won a couple more close games that were within our reach - Virginia, the first KY game, Texas A&M. Win those 3, all very winnable, and we'd be 19-4 and probably in the Top 10, or very close.
While I think we should be heavily favored to beat LSU no SEC game is a done deal. And at the Dawgs is far from an easy game. They beat USCe in their gym. They took us to OT in our house.
The computers, like KenPom, are trying to estimate team power. In order to do this, they rightly treat a 1 point win as almost the same outcome as a 1 pt loss. A resume ranking, like the seeding committee, is going to treat these two outcomes quite differently.
that’s the problem though, Kenpom and other models have us top 25 on average. That a seven seed. We’ve played a top 20 schedule and are winning more than 2/3. Even the NCAA’s preferred metric has us as an 8 seed. There’s literally nothing that should have us outside if the 8 line, 9 at absolute worst.
