Given the historic run the entire SEC league is on, the run the gators are on, and how the two subjects invariably will go together for the SEC tournament and later everyone aiming for the final four, I think its time for an SEC thread for the rest of this season to track other teams, stats, projections, news, and discuss as it relates to the gators and the SEC tournament. Heck at this point, the SEC tournament is shaping up to be a mini-NCAA tournament so it would only make sense for us to have the march madness equivalent thread for it pre-tourney. Another thing to track and discuss here is the potential regular season championship as it draws closer.
In order for it to be truly historic, the SEC has to shine in the big dance. Weird things happen in that tournament with strange seedings and weird matchups. If the SEC can get 20 or so wins in the tournament, then its time to start talking "historic". IMHO, of course.
Now I'm curious... I have no idea what the record is for most wins in the NCAA tournament by a single conference is. I might look that up.
The NCAA places the bubble at #45. Anywhere within a 4 or 5 spots north or south of 45 and you're a bubble team. That's not an issue for the Gators unless we suffer a lot of injuries and go into a tailspin. We're in the battle for a 1 through 4 seeding. There's lots of basketball to be played before Selection Day, but the SEC currently has 12 teams on the positive side of the bubble. On the outside are Oklahoma, Arky, LSU, and SC. The Sooners aren't too far away (#47), but the others have a lot of work to do. The hard lesson from last year is that the Selection Committee has already set their brackets and seeds before the SECT is even played, unless you win the damned thing. It's almost not worth playing.
I hope I didn't imply that I thought that I thought the gators were in any danger of missing the tourney. It was kind of the opposite. This is one of the rare times where you know what this team is midseason with like 95% confidence. When you have a team you know is this good, and you will have a "horse" in all the races, it makes the entire thing a lot more fun IMO. If you're more on the border, you care more about just making the tournament and can care much less about what happens elsewhere in the conference and nationwide. When you have this kind of team, its kind of fun to just relax and figure out/discuss where everything else is shaking out, where we might seed, where we might play etc. My point from the SEC tournament is if you win this year's tournament, you've basically won a mini-NCAA tournament with how tough it might be. If the gators win the SEC tournament, I don't care what it means to our tournament implications, we should celebrate massively. Because whoever claims this year's crown has serious bragging rights if nothing else. And on a personal level I've found conference tourney time to be just as fun, if not more than NCAA tourney time. You get the surprise runs, the bubble watch, the chance for revenge for stuff during the season (how sweet it was when the gators took out SC on their way to the tourney title that had beaten them twice during the regular season - and we got the Noah dance that will forever be linked with that run. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN JOAKIM NOAH! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN JOAKIM NOAH!) And that brings me to my last point: enjoy the ride folks. Seasons like this dont come along too often. Being able to know you'll have a horse in the race at this point and being able to talk about stuff like this at this point in the season is a LUXURY and really fun. Really enjoy it. Don't put too much into if Handlogten returns or not, what ifs, or get too hammed up on any one loss - especially during this next 4 game stretch. This is one of the most fun times to be a basketball and gator fan and is very rare (though fingers crossed we found our man with Golden and it becomes more common). Really really enjoy every step and keep context no matter what happens.
Yeah weird seeding in the NCAAs in the joker/wildcard in this equation. To gatorplanet's point, Im not sure the NCAA committee didn't watch the SEC tournament or consider the wins as much as I am that the NCAA sometimes underseeds/overseeds 1 line or 2 in the first round to create competitive matchups in the first round with some artificial help and the 7/10 is often where I see it happen and I think it happened to the gators last year. I think the gators and Colorado were both underseeded 1 line (So effectively a should-be-6 vs a should-be-9) to create a scenario for a likely tight 1st round game
What stands out is how much the league won in out of conference play. We’ll have our fair share of early flameouts in March (especially from teams that can’t defend), but no one can say we are overrated since our league beat so many quality teams in Nov-Dec. I also wonder how they seed teams that do lose some games in conference play. NET rankings are pretty favorable right now (more than some of the advanced sites), but those could really come back down to earth if a few teams struggle to win many Quad 1 games (mainly against better teams at home).
I just want to know whether the SEC League record has broken even. I know the other day it was a disturbing 54-54, which at least to one coach made us appear mediocre. Hoping we can improve on that .500 SEC League record!!!
I think we all need to admit that in-conference, the SEC is simply no better than a .500 league, and I don't see that getting better any time soon. Something needs to be done.
Yeah, but the SEC is tough this year, so going .500 means a lot. If the SEC was WEAK and it was a .500 league, then the SEC would be... well... Weak!
I always worry about our next opponent, but after watching the Kentucky-Tennessee game last night, I’m not that concerned. Kentucky was missing Butler and Carr and managed to beat Tennessee. The Volunteers seem to be heading in the wrong direction. They had quite a few breakdowns on defense last night and no one on the offensive side of the ball scares me. If we play like we have the past two Saturday’s we should roll past them easily.
Brutal blurb in the "Key moment" end of the ESPN recap: "Tennessee trailed 76-73 with 10 seconds to play when Jordan Gainey shot a 3-pointer and missed everything."
Probably the Big East in 1985 with 17 wins. Three teams reached Final Four (Georgetown, St. John's, Villanova) and Villanova won it all.
Stuck in a boring Teams meet and poked around a bit. I don't see a dedicated list, just fans talking - the most I've seen is ACC in 2016. 19 wins. Unrealated, but I also learned that while UF is 29th for most NCAA wins, we're 5th in winning percentage. Behind only Duke, UNC, UCLA, and... Loyola Chicago.
I think how games are officiated is going to be very important. The SEC is a very physical league and if tournament games are called tight, that might be a problem.
I think it depends on the game more than the habits of conference officiating. Officials love to say they were on the court for some of the memorable Cinderella games. If a high seed is not taking care of a low seed, having a rough day shooting, the refs start keeping the game close when they have a say, like 50/50 out of bounds, ticky tack fouls, and player control fouls. The crowds usually feed off the momentum and the excitement builds in the arena. Its not every game but you have to bring your A game so you don't run into a nail biter officiating group. That said, I keep telling myself your exact concern about tightly called games. Then I tell myself most NCAAT games are not called as tight as regular season games. But, not this year. The SEC seems to be playing by a different directive for officials this year. Its unbelievable what is not being called in many of the games I watch. I see plenty of body contact on layups, hand checking out high, players setting high picks and using their hands to push the defender further behind the ball handler, over the back non calls, and so on. But whatever you do you better not even breathe on a 3 point shooter.
Sorry for the hijack. I saw that Kugel started for Miss State last night against Bama. It was a good game. Too bad the home team didn't win it and give Bama a loss. Feels like we are all playing for third place in the league. But there is still a lot of basketball left. Anyways, it appears that he is now embracing being a defense-first player and hanging around the baseline in case a pass comes to him. He doesn't seem to be pouting because he isn't The Man on his team. Good for him.
