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SEC

Did we lock LSU too early? The Tigers were 15-2 when we put them up next to Auburn in the enviable lock category. Since then, they’re 0-2, with one close, hard-fought loss at Alabama and one horrendously ugly, massively frustrating defeat at Tennessee. For a team so gifted at defending, and one that creates so many good scoring opportunities from turnovers and blocks, it is truly incredible how many bad shots LSU takes. It’s small wonder the Tigers are the 14th-best offensive team in the SEC per-possession, and small wonder watching their games makes even a neutral want to throw sharp objects at the wall.

That said, LSU has played a brutal swath of the SEC schedule thus far: at Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, at Florida, Arkansas, at Alabama, at Tennessee. Scoring against that slate was always going to be tough. LSU went 3-4 in those games anyway, with maybe the home loss to Arkansas the one result they’d really like to have back. This is the 10th-ranked team in the NET with the No. 12-ranked schedule, one with four quality Quad 1 wins, a 7-1 record against the top two quadrants, and no bad losses. It is also the best defensive team in the country. Are we slightly concerned? If the offense stays in this crater, maybe slightly. But LSU is still a projected No. 2 seed after three straight defeats; it would take nothing short of a second-half apocalypse to put this at-large situation at risk.

Locks: Auburn, LSU

Should be in: Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama

Work to do: Florida, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Texas A&M

Kentucky (15-4, 5-2; NET: 9, SOS: 48)
Would it have been nice to see how a full-strength Kentucky held up in the second half at Auburn Saturday? Yes, it would have. But the thesis we had about the Wildcats coming in — that this team was good enough to go toe to toe with one of the best teams in the country in their rabid gym — felt more or less vindicated. Without TyTy Washington, Kentucky’s ability to hunt shots against good perimeter defense is limited, and when Sahvir Wheeler left the game (and later returned, but hardly seemed full strength), Kentucky pretty much stopped functioning. Auburn is too good to play against shorthanded. Still, assuming Washington gets healthy relatively soon, UK should come away from that game feeling very bullish on its chances of a deep tournament run. It’s a talented, efficient group on paper, but it’s also a grittier blend than the past couple of UK squads have been. This feels like a vintage John Calipari team in that way. It bodes well.

Tennessee (13-5, 4-3; NET: 11, SOS: 3)
Last week, we lamented Tennessee’s inability to put points on the board; even with Kennedy Chandler and other offseason additions, a consistently efficient offense remains the one missing piece preventing this team from being truly elite. Fortunately, LSU can’t score the ball at all, so the aforementioned flaw didn’t really matter last weekend. Tennessee beat LSU 64-50 — in 64 possessions. That’s certainly one way to do it. The addition of a second Quadrant 1 win (the first being over Arizona) boosts this resume considerably, with more opportunities for quality victories to come, up to and including Rick Barnes’ return to Texas Saturday. That one should be fun.

Alabama (13-6, 4-3; NET: 20, SOS: 2)
Alabama beat Missouri. This should almost go without saying, because Missouri is really bad at basketball, but the last time Alabama played Missouri, back on Jan. 8, this didn’t happen. That day, Missouri beat Alabama, which was bad for Alabama, because Missouri is bad at basketball. Make sense? Cool. The second Mizzou game was also extremely dicey, for what it’s worth; Alabama needed a 30-9 finish in the final 10 minutes to avoid a second devastating upset to the Tigers, one that would have landed in Quadrant 4. Scary stuff. Instead, last week can be considered an unmitigated success, as it also included a win over LSU, one that made Alabama 5-4 against Quadrant 1 and 4-1 against the top 11 in the NET. There is a bad loss here, yes, but it’s just the one, and the rest of this resume looks pretty darn good.

Florida (12-7, 3-4; NET: 34, SOS: 53)
Without being too harsh about it, Florida is the definition of mediocre. The Gators are capable of putting up good performances here and there — they did beat Ohio State on a neutral court, after all — and the win over Mississippi State last Wednesday was a useful game against a potential long-term bubble rival. But after three straight home wins, UF turned around and lost at Ole Miss Monday, 70-54. Ole Miss, for the record, ranks 134th in the NET, which just barely qualifies as a Quadrant 2 win unless and until the Rebels slip down to 135th or worse, at which point it will be Quadrant 3. The distinction there doesn’t really matter; it’s a bad loss, and yet more proof that Florida isn’t trending in the kind of positive direction we thought they might be a couple of weeks ago. Settle in, Gators fans. This team looks destined to stay on the bubble all year.

Mississippi State (13-5, 4-2; NET: 45, SOS: 154)
You have to feel for Mississippi State: When it lost to Louisville Nov. 25, there was no reason to expect the Cardinals to wind up being ranked 113th in the NET two months later. That should have been an acceptable nonconference loss; instead, it’s a bonafide bad look, and who knows how much deeper Louisville will sink before the season is over? Anyway, we’re still pretty bullish on MSU’s chances, no pun intended, despite that loss at fellow bubble team Florida on Jan. 19. This team is old, fairly talented (Iverson Molinar is having a great year), well-coached and just needs to a) hold serve against the teams it should beat and b) seize a few of quality opportunities this year’s SEC, in its bounty, provides.

Arkansas (14-5, 4-3; NET: 55, SOS: 110)
Beating Texas A&M on your own floor in overtime is not exactly the world’s greatest accomplishment; it is not the kind of thing that is going to really move Arkansas’s bubble needle. But Texas A&M is a decent and well-coached team that nearly knocked off Kentucky earlier in the same week; as Arkansas found out Jan. 8, the Aggies can be dangerous in any setting. Surviving kept the Hogs’ badly needed momentum going. They’re now 4-0 in their last four, a stretch that includes a win over LSU and constitutes a minor redemption from a 1-5 stretch between Dec. 11 and Jan. 8. More is required, but things are trending in a positive direction.

Texas A&M (14-4, 4-2; NET: 61, SOS: 142)
The ingredients for a massive upset were there. Texas A&M was guarding like crazy. Kentucky was out of rhythm, playing ugly, incredibly cold from deep. The Aggies led for the vast majority of the game. Then, in the final few minutes, UK gutted out a win. A&M fell away. This has been the story in all four of the Aggies’ losses this season — they’re close, but they’re not quite there yet, which is sort of how we feel about this resume. A&M is 0-4 against Quadrant 1, all of which were close, well-played games, and 14-0 against the rest of the team sheet. Unfortunately, 12 of those 14 wins came against Q3 and Q4 teams, and after the UK disappointment (and the overtime loss at Arkansas in OT Saturday), there remain basically zero high-quality victories on this resume. More opportunities abound: There are five Q1 opportunities left on this schedule (as of this writing; teams can move in and out of categories, obviously) and four Q2 chances before the end of the regular season, too. The Aggies need to get over the hump.

This post was edited on 1/25/22 at 8:06 am