SEC Basketball off to a horrendous start

The NET rankings are fluctuating wildly day-to-day so it will take a few more weeks before they make sense, but they are already showing a very big gap between the top and bottom half of the league:

Today’s NET:

5. Vanderbilt
11. Alabama
16. Georgia
22. Florida
23. Arkansas
31. Kentucky
33. Tennessee
34. Auburn
39. LSU
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71. Missouri
78. Oklahoma
79. Texas A&M
86. Texas
103. South Carolina
110. Ole Miss
160. Mississippi State

Vanderbilt (4-0), Alabama (3-2), Florida (2-3), and Auburn (2-3) are the only four teams with multiple Quad 1 or Quad 2 wins (Q1+Q2 record shown in parentheses). Florida is the only one of those teams that has a Quad 2 loss… all of those other losses above are Quad 1’s. So I feel like these four teams are off to the best start when it comes to building a Tournament resume.

Arkansas (1-2) and Tennessee (1-3) each have one solid Q1 win. However one of those losses for Tennessee is a Quad 2 loss so that’s not ideal. Both of those teams are probably not off to the type of start they were hoping for, but nothing about their resume is a real detriment to their Tournament hopes.

Georgia (1-1) has a solid NET ranking, but zero Quad one wins yet. They do have a Quad 2 win. They might be decent this year but without a single win over the KenPom Top 80 opponent, they could also be a major fraud at this point.

LSU (0-1) was sitting pretty like Georgia until yesterday. They had a NET of #18 and then faced their first challenge of the season and got demolished by Texas Tech. I think they still have room to fall further once they start playing tougher competition.

Kentucky (0-4) has the talent to win the SEC, but they are off to a horrific start. They’ll need to get to 18 overall wins to have a shot at getting into the Tournament. That means they’ll have to beat Indiana, St John’s, and then go 9-9 or better in conference play. Lose to either or both of those OOC teams and those necessary wins in SEC play could move to 10 or even 11. There is still time, but time is running out and it’s still December.

Oklahoma (1-3) and Texas (1-3) both have a Quad 1 win but also both have a not ideal Quad 2 loss. At the moment, neither look like Tournament teams but there is still hope.

Texas A&M (0-3), South Carolina (0-3), Ole Miss (0-3), and Mississippi State (0-4) have likely already eliminated themselves from Tournament barring a miraculous turnaround.