Now that we're through that three game ACC stretch, wanted to take a look at where things stand. Seen a lot of just wild numbers pulled out of the air so figured I'd do a little dive on how things are shaping up around the SEC and what we realistically need to do to make the NCAA Tournament.

1) The SEC is down, but still pretty good, but it's lacking at the top end

There's a lot of ways to judge conferences. Do they have any elite teams, how good is the average team, how many awful teams do they have, etc. So when one persons says a league is down they might be judging on a different scale than someone else.

One thing is for sure, the SEC does not have the top end teams it had a year ago. This was expected, but the degree to which its been true is somewhat surprising. The higher end SEC teams have just been getting blasted by the higher end teams from other conferences. Last year the SEC had 4 of the top 6 teams in Torvik on Selection Sunday. This year it's going to be lucky to have one or two in the top ten.

But what it does have is a whole bunch of pretty good teams. Currently 13 teams are in the top 60, and 12 are in the top 45 which is the bubble-ish zone. Ten teams from #16 Florida to #45 Texas sit between 15 and 45.

So as a result, by Torvik, the SEC is still the nation's best league. It's just that its strength this year is the depth of the middle more than the power at the top.

2) All of college basketball has been pretty volatile

This was also expected when so many teams graduated so many COVID seniors and teams figured out they could start signing international pro players, it's just a major transition year for the sport. Gonzaga is a top five team in KenPom and Torvik and lost a game by 40 points and beat a top 25 team by 35.

Teams with any kind of roster continuity are out to some hot starts, and it's going to be interesting to see if other teams pull them back to the pack as the season keeps going. A good example here is Vanderbilt. They were picked 11th in the SEC in preseason but they're currently the best team in the league by both Torvik and KenPom.

3) We don't have to drastically over-perform our projection to make the field

The UCF and SMU collapses could come back to hurt us, but the situation isn't as dire as some people seem to think. Torvik currently projects us to go 8-10 in league play which would put us 18-13 and 8-10 overall. That's not likely to get us into the NCAA Tournament, but it shows we're in MUCH better shape at this point than in some other seasons where we ended up on the bubble.

The good news about the shape the SEC is in is that we're going to have a ton of chances of quality wins that are realistic. It's not one of those years where we need to win some games we're very unlikely to win. Right now Torvik only has three games left on the schedule that we have less than a 20% chance of winning. (The road games at Tennessee, Vandy and Alabama.)

So if we can keep improving, there are wins to be had. It's not like we're saying we have to go beat several top ten teams on the road to have a shot.

If we make the NCAAT this season in Year 1 that is gravy IMO. I am mostly looking for good signs in Year 1 that 'Bucky Ball' is feasible at this level and the guy isn't out of his depth.

Nate Oats first year at Bama was 16-15 (8-10) for example. Missing the tournament this season isn't going to be an indictment, though I at least would like to see Bucky throwing and landing some good punches even though also taking a lot of hits.

Oh…and one of the most fascinating story lines in the SEC right now has to be Kentucky and how that team's season plays out.

10-8 or better in conference or will be NIT bound imo unless we win the conference tourney of course. I'd put it at 40% chance to make the tourney right now.

A 5-2 start in conference would have me feeling much better.

I don't mean this as negative towards Bucky and staff at all. Just the fact that he was able to pull together a roster that doesn't look like a bottom 4 conference team is actually a positive imo but there are still glaring holes

I don't really blame Bucky at all for yesterday. You expect players with the amount of game experience ours have to not just catastrophically implode. I mean we'd have been better off punting the ball into the bleachers than what we did. We could have taken a timeout, but still. We had two possessions where they were probably going to foul us if we crossed half court that we turned the ball over and then two more chances to win the game in regulation where we didn't even get a shot up.

UCF game is a slightly more complicated story where there's a lot of blame to go around.

But we're still in decent shape is I guess part of the point of why I started this thread. Yesterday sucked, it was definitely a missed opportunity, but there are more opportunities to be had and they aren't like wildly unrealistic like they might have been last year.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if we don't get our doors blown off 2-3 x

To be fair I'll also be surprised if we don't blow someone else's doors off 2-3x as well.


Pretty much we'll live and die based on 3 pt shooting but the better teams are likely going to maul us in the paint .

I think even if we get our doors blown off 2-3 times that's okay if it's the right teams.

I'd break down the SEC slate like this:

Heavy underdogs, it's a NET win if we can keep it close and a massive boost if we win
@ Tennessee, @ Alabama, @ Vanderbilt, @ Arkansas

Underdogs, but winnable, real chance to make up ground here
@Auburn, @ Texas, @Georgia, Florida, @Oklahoma, @LSU

Favored, but close, would be nice to win all these but we'll probably drop one or two
LSU, Oklahoma, Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas, Kentucky

Have to win these
State, South Carolina

So we're probably going to need to steal one from the top two groups to have a shot, and then we need to take another one for every game we lose in the bottom two groups.

Or put another way, we need to win at least one road game plus another one for any home games we lose.