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email John Stansberry |
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AROUND THE NATION
Dec. 21, 2009
A weekend to forget for the SEC
It wasn't exactly a banner weekend for the SEC, and
for a league that as a whole endured a sub par
2008-09 campaign, it served as a reminder that
there’s still more hill to climb.
The very top of the league is unquestionably
stronger with Kentucky emerging as a legitimate
Final Four contender. But it's still unclear whether
another couple of SEC teams can emerge as legitimate
threats to grab higher seeds come this March.
Last week, I would have said Tennessee appeared to
be a squad that could do just that. With a top ten
ranking and a single loss coming into the weekend,
Bruce Pearl’s team looked to be on the verge of
getting on a major roll.
But in what we might look back on as the season's
biggest head scratcher, the Volunteers traveled to
LA and were routed by a 4-4 team USC team to the
tune of a 77-55 count.
This is the same USC team that lost Taj Gibson,
DeMar DeRozan and Daniel Hackett in the offseason
and is still adjusting to new head coach Kevin
O’Neill.
Tennessee simply had no answer for Trojan point
guard Mike Gerrity, who dished out 10 assists in his
first action of the season after transferring from
Charlotte. It wasn’t much better on the interior as
USC pulled down a whopping 22 more rebounds than
Tennessee.
While this loss doesn’t necessarily mean the wheels
have come off at Tennessee, the car is definitely up
on blocks at Auburn. Following an 18-point loss to
Sam Houston State on Sunday, things have gone from
bad to worse for Jeff Lebo.
If Lebo’s seat wasn’t hot before this loss, it’s
positively scorching for him come this week. The
Auburn coach watched his team allow the Bearkats to
shoot 57.6% from the field in a game that was
effectively over before halftime.
While Pearl and Lebo were losing by a combined 40
points over the weekend, their fellow SEC colleague
Billy Donovan watched his Florida team turn an
8-point halftime lead into a 56-53 loss to Richmond.
After an 8-0 start that revived the championship
echoes from the program’s recent past, Florida has
now lost two straight. Donovan’s team looked
strangely flat in the second half against Richmond,
shooting just 27% from the field and only 1-of-9
from 3-point land.
Donovan’s former assistant and current Alabama head
coach Anthony Grant also saw his team contribute to
the SEC’s weekend to forget. The Tide was
overwhelmed in Mobile by a Kansas State squad that’s
playing as good as anyone right now.
In a contest in which the outcome was never much in
doubt just a few minutes in, it didn’t even matter
that the Tide forced K-State into 22 turnovers. The
Wildcats offset that by shooting 59% from the field
and grabbing 15 more rebounds.
But hold on, things actually got worse for the SEC,
with South Carolina adding to the league’s misery as
well. On Saturday, the Gamecocks traveled over to
Spartanburg for an in-state battle with a Wofford
team that they had beaten 21 straight times.
The Terriers not only stopped that win streak but
started one of their own. After holding on to beat
South Carolina by a 68-61 count, Wofford has now won
two straight over SEC competition after beating
Georgia earlier this season.
So what does a bad weekend in December say about a
league as a whole? Obviously, it’s still too early
to make a definitive prediction on how the SEC will
match up with other conferences come March.
But a slew of losses like this could be a sign that
the conference is on the verge of major parity once
the intraleague games start. And having too many
teams finished with 9-7ish records in the conference
isn’t necessarily a good thing for the SEC’s
national profile.
Let’s say Kentucky runs away from the pack and a
glut of average to above average teams in the rest
of the SEC beat up on each other. If that were come
to pass, then the SEC might not significantly
improve on the three NCAA tourney bids its teams
received last season.
For a league whose members have generated 11 Final
Four appearances and five National Titles over the
last 15 years, such a scenario would be much more
embarrassing than anything that happened the week
before Christmas.
John Stansberry is in his thirteenth season as
a senior writer for collegeinsider.com.
EMAIL JOHN |
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