2025 SEC Tournament Central

We play Bama like we did Mizzou, and it'll be us staring at a 25 point defeat.

 

It’s a good question. Right now, clearly Florida is on top. The question is, who is on top if Bama beats Florida? And then Auburn? Lets see if we can make a case for them.

The Gators and Tide share the best win in the nation, at Auburn, so we can ignore that one. Here’s a win comparison for each team after that:

Florida top 25 wins:

5 home
6 away
19 home
17 neutral

Bama’s:

3 neutral
13 away
13 home
13 neutral (man they really had UK’s number)
15 neutral

Florida has the best win (at #6 Bama), but Bama has two great wins in beating #3 Houston on a neutral court and #13 UK away. They also have one more top 25 win. And they have 11 quad 1 wins total compared to the Gators’ 9. Slight edge to Bama.


For losses, both teams lost at Tenn, so we can ignore that one. Here are the remaining ones:

Florida’s losses:

13 away
17 home
33 away

Bama’s losses:

2 home
4 home (yeah!)
16 away
17 away
27 home
28 neutral

The first note is that, indeed, Bama has many more losses. But we could possibly excuse them if they were great losses. Losing to 2 and 4 are pretty good losses, but Florida did beat their only top 5 visitor. After that, nothing is better about Bama’s losses. Advantage Florida.

So overall advantage to Florida right now. But what if Bama wins two more?


Florida would add one more good loss (#6 neutral). The Gators would still have the edge in losses.

Bama would add two more great wins, #4 and #2 neutral. At this point, I think Bama’s slight edge in wins would move into the territory of solid advantage, and I think give Bama have an argument for being seeded over Florida.

But we can make all this moot by just knocking them out today.

 

Exactly just beat them!

 

Gatorade, you forgot our win at home against #1 UT.

 

UF -3.5

 

Ofc, ranked wins don’t really matter to the committee. In all the important metrics, with the exception of KenPom (where we are way ahead), Florida and Bama are neck and neck: Torvik, WAB, KPI, SOR, BPI, Q1A record. What’s helped Bama is a much harder non-conference slate. Also, Bama beating Auburn on the road (frankly, in a game where Auburn had little to play for except pride, having already locked up 1 seeds in the SECs and NCAAs) kept them in the conversation with us. Otherwise, yesterday’s game would have locked up our 1-seed.

This is the rare year where I do think a win today could be the difference between, say, a 1-seed in San Fran and 2 in Indy. I don’t see Tennessee making up enough ground, even if they win the tournament, to get off the 2 line in Newark. They are further behind in most metrics, and their weakness (non-conference schedule) is the same as ours.

 

You’re right. It’s Bama’s stronger non conference schedule that has made this an actual competition. By the same token, in a comparison with Duke, I believe the Gators’ stronger conference schedule has made it a competition there as well. I really think a couple more wins would not only make sure we’re ahead of Bama but should also make a case for us over Duke.

And I wasn’t using AP ranked wins in my analysis. I was using NET rankings and just arbitrarily cutting off my list at #25 to make it manageable.

 

Duke’s metrics are of a different magnitude, IMO. Nothing that happens this weekend would enable us to catch them or Duke, and this stage likely not Houston. Seems like the only unsettled seed is us and Bama.

 

You’re absolutely correct that Duke’s power ratings are super high, but the resume is about the same as Florida’s right now. With wins against Bama and Auburn, Florida’s resume would be objectively superior. The question would be can Florida’s resume superiority make up for Duke’s metric superiority?

It might be closer than you think. With two more wins, Florida would end up with 11 Quad 1 wins to Duke’s 9 (if Duke also wins today), and five top 10 NET wins to Duke’s one. Meanwhile, the Gators’ KenPom rating is rising, almost reaching 35 already. It would not be hard to imagine passing that mark with these two more wins and bringing us within 3 points of Duke on the metric side. I think Duke is a great team, but the Gators’ schedule was just stronger. Hopefully we get a chance to find out.

 

Their KP is the highest of all time, unless I am missing something. Other metrics are a little closer, but I don’t think you are gonna see much movement now. The only lines the committee will likely be willing to swap at this stage are us and Bama, since that would have the least impact on brackets (eg previous matchups, conference rematch rules) and regional/pod sites.

 

AU has not looked like the #1 overall seed since Bama beat them. UT is definitely controlling the flow of this game. AU with only 21 points with 7 minutes to go in the first. 26-21 Vols

 

And of course AU goes on a 6-0 run to close it to 26-25 before the under 4 tv timeout haha

 

I think you’re right that their KenPom rating would be the highest of all time, but I don’t know how much that matters. Not counting other current teams, I think Florida’s KenPom rating would rank 4th time. But the whole deal is compare teams against those from the same year.

You’re assuming that the committee would have to move us above Duke now. We’ve only heard from the committee once, a month ago, so we actually don’t know how they’ve been thinking. They might have had Florida and Duke neck and neck for a while now.

You’re probably right because it’s Duke and their metrics are great. But historically the committee was much more concerned with resume than metrics. Clearly, times have changed, but by how much?

 

It’s a good question, but they have incorporated more and more of the metrics on their team “sheets.”

 

Frankly, I think the team is a little more dependent on a single player offensively, especially a big. Their guards are a little unpredictable. Pearl has done a really good job working around that and adapting his flex stuff to get Broome good looks and running everything through him. We’ll see how it plays out in the NCAAs.

 

Yesterday one of the panel said "Todd Golden you would have been coach of the year except for that Bruce Pearl guy."

Golden said, "who's that?"

 

Auburn looking shaky going into the tournament. Personally I credit the Gators for breaking them.