LSU won the SEC regular season championship, but anyone who has followed college basketball this season knows the conference battle that matters on the national scene is the seesaw between Tennessee and Kentucky for what could be the fourth #1 seed. With the Tigers getting dispatched by Florida on Friday afternoon, the stage is now set for the third installment of this season’s battle between the two hated rivals. Sure, it won’t get the fanfare and doesn’t have the star power of North Carolina vs. Duke, but when the Volunteers and Wildcats face off on Saturday afternoon, the implications may be just as great. Kentucky came into the weekend projected as one of the four top seeds in the NCAA Tournament by essentially everyone; likewise, Tennessee is viewed as a #2 seed in nearly every relevant bracketology. If the Volunteers beat the Wildcats for the second time this season, it stands to reason that they will instead have a claim on a top seed going into Selection Sunday.

On Friday evening, both teams handled their business with relative ease. Kentucky, behind a swarming defense that forced Alabama into just 30 percent shooting, dispatched the Crimson Tide, 73-55. Tennessee faced a tougher challenge from a game Mississippi State team that is solidly within the field of 68, before showing the offensive efficiency they are known for on their way to an 83-76 win.

The first two match-ups between these two teams were mirror images of each other. Kentucky dismantled Tennessee in mid-February, handing the Volunteers their only double-figure loss of the season, 86-69. Two weeks later, Tennessee raced out to a 19-point win over the Wildcats in Knoxville. While Kentucky’s strength of schedule numbers are a bit stronger than those of Tennessee, the teams’ resumes are similar enough that a win in the rubber match should be enough to claim a #1 seed regardless of what may happen in Sunday’s SEC Tournament championship game. Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes hinted after the game that the winner would indeed earn that top slot. “The league deserves a #1 seed. I’ll be disappointed if someone in our league doesn’t end up on that one line.”

Even in the face of fervent anticipation, the start of the college hoops season has a way of sneaking up on us. Now only two weeks away and with the brutal gauntlet of a full conference slate coming seven weeks after that, it feels like a good time to preview the 10 most compelling non-conference match-ups that ACC members will encounter during the upcoming campaign. This list excludes preseason tourneys (Duke heading to Maui, for example, among others) and the annual ACC/Big Ten Challenge, which we will preview in more depth ahead of those events. Here we go, in calendar order, starting with the Champions Classic on opening night.

It’s Always Must-See College Basketball when Duke Meets Kentucky (USA Today Images)

• November 6- Duke vs. Kentucky (Champions Classic, Indianapolis). In a very off-brand, sensible decision, the NCAA has stopped burying the season’s annual tip-off on a pedestrian Friday night and instead will utilize the grand stage of the Champions Classic to get things going. In the nightcap game of the Indianapolis event, two teams with legitimate championship aspirations and talent galore will meet once again. For Duke, the nation’s top-rated incoming class features do-everything wing R.J. Barrett along with explosive man-child Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish and Tre Jones (brother of Tyus Jones, the 2015 NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player). In an unusual turn of events, it will be Kentucky that is armed with the more experienced roster, as the Blue Devils’ leading returning scorer will be junior big man Marques Bolden (3.9 PPG), while the Wildcats retained sophomores Quade Green, P.J. Washington and Nick Richardsfrom last year’s Sweet Sixteen squad.
• November 6: Florida at Florida State. This annual tussle will serve as the rivals’ season opener this year, as the Gators look to avenge a home thrashing by the Seminoles last season. Florida State returns seven of its top nine scorers, including leading man Phil Cofer, from a squad that was within a whisker of the Final Four a year ago. The cupboard is not bare for Mike White, either, as Florida features a dynamic, experienced tandem on the wings in seniors KeVaughn Allen and Jalen Hudson. Numerous explosive athletes on both sides of the floor will make this game worth flipping to during the commercial breaks of the Duke/Kentucky tilt.
• November 15: Connecticut vs Syracuse (Madison Square Garden). Two old Big East foes will rekindle their long and storied rivalry at a familiar venue in New York City. The Orange return all of their top pieces from last year’s Sweet Sixteen squad, including the ACC’s third-leading scorer, Tyus Battle. He will be joined by a pair of exciting rising sophomores in Oshae Brissett and Marek Dolezaj along with freshmen Jalen Carey and Buddy Boeheim, giving Syracuse a roster that should easily result in a top-half ACC finish. New Connecticut head coach Danny Hurley will begin the process of getting this proud program back on track after consecutive sub-.500 seasons that led to the ouster of onetime championship coach Kevin Ollie.

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On Monday morning of this week, Tennessee entered the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2010. And while it has been a very long road back into the national rankings for a program on its fourth head coach in those intervening seasons, things finally appear to be on the upswing in Knoxville. Under third-year coach Rick Barnes, the Volunteers are proving correct those skeptics around the program who scoffed at the SEC media’s  preseason 13th-place projection. Tennessee’s only loss to date came in a semifinal match-up against #4 Villanova at the Battle 4 Atlantis, and even that was a game in which the Vols led by double-figures at the half. Barnes’ team also owns a number of resume-enhancing wins against Purdue, NC State, Georgia Tech and a Mercer club that figures to spend much of the season in the RPI top 100. Another solid mid-major test looms on Saturday against a potent Lipscomb team before a December 17 home date with defending National Champion North Carolina. Even with a loss to the Tar Heels, Tennessee will likely be 9-2 and ranked heading into SEC play later this month.

Sophomore Grant Williams is a major reasons why Rick Barnes’ rebuild is ahead of schedule. (Chattanooga Times Free-Press)

Since his arrival in Knoxville three years ago, Barnes has regularly received criticism for his recruiting. He has countered with dialogue about finding players to fit his system, and the fruits of his efforts to build a nucleus of solid yet unspectacular players appears to be paying off. This is a particularly interesting turn of events for a coach who came from Texas with a reputation of being a better recruiter than floor coach. Instead, Barnes has built a roster of athletic players who have bought into a system stressing defense and rebounding. The Volunteers are turning opponents over on 25.5 percent of their defensive possessions — good for 12th nationally, per KenPom – and despite lacking significant size, are grabbing 37.2 percent of their misses (17th nationally) on the offensive end. These improvements from last season (126th and 82nd, respectively) can largely be attributed to greater experience and familiarity in Barnes’ system and the development of players who have spent multiple seasons learning it. Read the rest of this entry »

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee on Tuesday announced that it would provide an in-season preview of the bracket’s top 16 seeds. SEC fans outside of Lexington should not get overly excited. Kentucky will most certainly hear its name called during the first-ever event, but it is unlikely any other SEC team will. In fact, Selection Sunday — wherein, of course, 68 names are called — may not be all that much better. The snark targeted at SEC basketball is at an all-time high with Sports Illustrated predicting no more than three conference teams in the Big Dance (doubling down on that prediction again with Seth Davis’ column), the bracketology at CBS showing Kentucky little respect as a #3 seed, and even the most kind bracketologist projecting a maximum of four SEC teams partaking in March Madness. National confidence in the league is painfully low, and perhaps that makes sense considering the resurgence that has been predicted for years has not come with the requisite corresponding postseason success (aside from one program).

Could Mike Anderson hear Arkansas’ name called on Selection Sunday?

The consensus among bracketologists is that three SEC teams are safely into the field as of today – Kentucky, South Carolina and Florida. While there is some debate about how deserving Kentucky is of a #1 seed, there is no scenario that slots the Wildcats any lower than the #3 seed line. A win on Saturday against Kansas would only strengthen Kentucky’s case for a top seed. South Carolina ranks #17 in the RPI and holds wins over Michigan, Syracuse and Florida. The Gators could really use a signature win beyond those three, but they have an RPI of #11 and are the nation’s 13th-best team, according to KenPom. Beyond the top three, the question becomes which SEC teams, if any, have a reasonable chance of an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Correspondingly, how important are Saturday’s match-ups in the Big 12/SEC Challenge in order to keep their hopes alive?

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If there is such a thing as a moral victory, Tennessee exited Chapel Hill with a massive win on Sunday night. As Rick Barnes‘ Volunteers led a more experienced and talented North Carolina club by as many as 15 points in the first half, it felt as though we were watching the second-year SEC coach’s coming-out party. But Barnes wasn’t interested in victories that don’t count in the win column, saying afterward: “I don’t want them to feel good about being close in games. We’ve got to figure out a way to get over the hump.” If Tennessee is going to get over that hump this season, it will need to find a better way to get the ball to wing Robert Hubbs — something the Volunteers failed to do with the game on the line over the weekend.

Rick Barnes almost had a signature win for his early tenure in the SEC (Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports Images)

Tennessee’s offense completely sputtered down the stretch in Chapel Hill, scoring just five points in the critical last five minutes of the game. Hubbs dominated the wing, scoring 21 points on 9-of-11 shooting before sitting with cramps with just over five minutes remaining. When he returned to the Vols’ lineup at the 3:35 mark, his teammates failed to get him the ball on three critical possessions down the stretch. In the first scenario — with Tennessee up one point and 2:46 remaining — Shembari Phillips dribbled around the perimeter for most of the shot clock before giving it to freshman Grant Williams so he could settle for a contested three-point jumper. Here is the offensive set in all of its glory.

In the second critical possession, the Vols — now trailing by one point with less than two minutes remaining — drew up a play out of a timeout to get Hubbs the ball. As the screenshot below shows, Hubbs moves across the lane as if to set a screen along the baseline before pivoting to post up his defender. Phillips then dribbles to the right wing for the post entry pass, but North Carolina’s Kenny Williams plays such great denial defense that Hubbs ends up about 18 feet from the basket. The play fails. Phillips has nowhere to go, so he instead hands the ball off again to Williams at the top of the key, who quickly drives and turns the ball over. Read the rest of this entry »

SEC basketball has long suffered from the perception that the league consists of Kentucky and a group of schools waiting for spring football to begin. While the league has begun to attack its image problem, there is still work to be done. If the SEC needs a blueprint for how to flip the script on the current narrative, it can look at the Big 12’s recent resurgence. While Kansas has been the unquestioned lodestar in that conference, the other schools have taken action and helped create a college hoops monster. Since many of the schools in the Big 12 are also football powers, their experiences have particular relevance to the pigskin-mad members of the SEC. Here are four steps the SEC can take to replicate the basketball success of their Big 12 counterparts.

SEC Basketball Should Look to the Big 12 for a Roadmap to Success

1. Sell the Chase. Too often it seems as if the other 13 SEC schools are resigned to Kentucky’s dominance. That is not the case in the Big 12, a league that has done a great job in capturing fan interest by making sure everyone knows the worthy challengers to the Jayhawks (winners of 12 straight conference titles) each season. Sports fans love to see dynasties pushed to the limit. The SEC has to become more proactive in marketing that possibility to its core audience.
2. Stay the Course. One of the main reasons the Big 12 has been able to improve its basketball brand is with its aggressive hiring of quality coaches. When half or more of your league coaches have been to a Final Four, you are on to something. The SEC has followed suit in the past couple of hiring cycles. Names like Ben Howland, Bruce Pearl, Rick Barnes, and Avery Johnson resonate with fans. The conference will benefit if every school with an opening makes a similar commitment to hiring a coach with some professional cachet. Doing that allows for the type of top-to-bottom strength that has served the Big 12 so well. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we brought you the first half of our 64 thoughts on the SEC’s upcoming season. Today we finish out our rambling thoughts on the conference.

33. Kasey Hill shot under 54 percent from the foul line last season. Mike White can’t afford to have a point guard on the floor who can’t make free throws in crucial end-of-game situations.
34. Florida’s alternative at the point, Chris Chiozza, converts 79 percent of his free throws.
35. Based on scrimmage results, Devin Robinson seems poised for a breakout year. Robinson connected on all four of his three-point attempts and finished the game with 23 points.
36. I believe Robinson is going to have such a big year that I put him on my All-SEC first team, which includes: G- De’Aaron Fox, Kentucky; G- Isaiah Briscoe, Kentucky; F- Devin Robinson, Florida; F- Yante Maten, Georgia; C- Moses Kingsley, Arkansas
37. Kingsley in 2014-15: 3.6 PPG, 2.5 RPG; Kingsley in 2015-16: 15.9 PPG, 9.3 RPG, 2.4 BPG.
38. Maten in 2014-15: 5.0 PPG, 4.3 RPG; Maten in 2015-16: 16.5 PPG, 8.0 RPG.
39. My All-SEC second team: G- J.J. Frazier, Georgia; G- Malik Monk, Kentucky; G- Quinndary Weatherspoon, Mississippi State; F- Bam Adebayo, Kentucky; C- Tyler Davis, Texas A&M.
40. Honorable mention (otherwise known as guys who would have made the first or second team if I didn’t limit the selection to five players): G- KeVaughn Allen, Florida; G- Antonio Blakeney, LSU; G- Matthew Fisher-Davis, Vanderbilt; G- Dusty Hannahs, Arkansas; F- Luke Kornet, Vanderbilt; G- Sindarius Thornwell, South Carolina; G- Duane Notice, South Carolina; G- Mustapha Heron, Auburn; C- John Egbunu, Florida; F- Sebastian Saiz, Ole Miss; F- Craig Victor, LSU; F- DJ Hogg, Texas A&M.

The SEC has no shortage of quality freshmen, and Auburn’s Mustapha Heron might be the best not in a Kentucky uniform. (Getty)

41. By the way, all-conference teams should include no more than five players to remain consistent with the All-America teams and because it’s just common sense.
42. The SEC is in no shortage of quality freshmen, and Auburn’s Mustapha Heron might be the best not in a Kentucky uniform.
43. The addition of Heron has a lot of people in Auburn, Alabama, excited about basketball for Bruce Pearl’s third season. Pearl finished his third season at Tennessee in 2008 with a 31-5 campaign and the schools’ first trip to the top of the AP poll. Could year three with Auburn finally represent the breakout year the Tigers have been waiting on?
44. No matter what happens, Auburn has something all of us wish we had – a giant bronze statue of Charles Barkley.
45. Even with Heron suiting up for the Tigers, there isn’t a reasonable scenario where Auburn finishes any higher than 12th.
46. My predicted order of finish: 1- Kentucky; 2- Florida; 3- Georgia; 4-Texas A&M; 5- Vanderbilt; 6- Arkansas; 7- Alabama; 8- Ole Miss; 9- Mississippi State; 10- South Carolina; 11- LSU; 12- Tennessee; 13- Auburn; 14- Missouri
47. The top five (Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt) will receive bids to the NCAA Tournament.
48. Only Kentucky will make it out of the first weekend.
49. Missouri seems hopeless. I would be surprised if Kim Anderson is still coaching the Tigers next season.
50. Anderson has put together a total of 19 wins in two seasons in Missouri.
51. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Mike Anderson gone too if Arkansas fails to make the NCAA Tournament again.

Will Mike Anderson survive another year in Fayetteville?

52. If Arkansas is left out of the field on Selection Sunday, it will be the age-old “not enough quality wins on its resume” argument that provides the reason.
53. The Razorbacks play only one preseason top 50 KenPom team (Texas) on its non-conference schedule.
54. Arkansas is always strong at home at Bud Walton Arena, but Florida is likely the best opponent making a trip to Fayetteville this year.
55. If you’re keeping count — that’s potentially three SEC coaches who won’t be around after the 2016-17 season.
56. One SEC coach is on his way in, however, as new Vanderbilt head coach Bryce Drew is bringing high hopes along after a 30-win season at Valparaiso. Vandy might be happy with just 25 wins (a feat it last accomplished in 2012).
57. According to KenPom, Drew’s last Crusaders team fielded a top-10 defense, which has to excite Commodores’ fans with the level of shooting that returns in Nashville. Both Matthew Fisher-Davis and Jeff Roberson shot over 45 percent from behind the arc last year.
58. Just imagine if Riley LaChance shoots like it’s 2014 again.
59. Vanderbilt has the opportunity to tip off the season with quality wins in neutral site games against Marquette and Butler before December.
60. Last year’s Tennessee team was the first time ever that a Rick Barnes team finished with a sub-100 KenPom defense.
61. Barnes’ last Texas team in 2014-15 finished first in two-point defense percentage and first in block percentage.
62. Avery Johnson’s second Alabama team will be slightly better than his first, even with the loss of Retin Obasohan. Expect to see the Crimson Tide compete in some games we wouldn’t necessarily expect.
63. Ben Howland’s second Mississippi State team will be slightly better than his first, but don’t expect a big jump until year three.
64. The SEC lacks the overall star power (outside of Kentucky) that it had last year, but 2016-17 is still shaping up to be a fun year for both college basketball and SEC fans.

The beginning of another college basketball season is already in progress, and with it an opportunity to start talking about SEC hoops again. The SEC last season managed just three bids to the NCAA Tournament, but with a new year brings optimism that more teams can break into the First Round field of 64. To tip off the SEC microsite, here are 64 musings, opinions, thoughts, predictions, questions, and observations about the 2016-17 season [Ed. Note: Technically, 32 since this is part one of two with the second part coming tomorrow]:

John Calipari is confident once again as Kentucky shapes up to be the head of the SEC in 2016-17. (AP)

1. Kentucky is the clear favorite to win the SEC this year, but the big question mark about the Wildcats in the preseason revolves around their three-point accuracy. It says here that this will be the best perimeter shooting squad John Calipari has put on the court in Lexington since his 2011 Final Four team.
2. Wildcat sophomore guard Isaiah Briscoe shot just 13.5 percent from beyond the arc last year, allowing opposing defenses to sag to the middle on him. But the limited sample of shooting we have seen so far suggests that he will no longer be an offensive liability shooting the ball this season.
3. Briscoe was also 9-of-12 from the free throw line in Friday night’s Blue-White game, indicating that his 46 percent accuracy from the stripe last season could also be a thing of the past. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s finals week across the country and we’re currently in the midst of the slowest week of the college basketball season. The basketball may not be great, but it is the perfect time to hand out a few grades of our own to teams, players, coaches and conferences. Hopefully the feedback will be easier to understand than your teacher’s scribbled critiques in those little blue books.

Purdue: A

Isaac Haas Has Been Dominant For The Undefeated Boilers (Photo: The Exponent)

Over the first month of the season, the two biggest “it” teams are Oklahoma and these Boilers. Purdue is 11-0 for the first time since 2009-10, when Robbie Hummel, E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson led the Boilers to a share of the Big Ten crown. This Purdue outfit may be the best Matt Painter team since that group, and some are saying this could be the best team in West Lafayette since Glenn Robinson donned the black and gold in the early ’90s. That kind of talk may be getting a little ahead of things, but these Boilers have won all 11 games by double-figures. The major tests start coming in now, beginning with the Boilers’ next four games: Butler at the Crossroads Classic in Indianapolis; Vanderbilt at home; at Wisconsin (in the Badgers first Big Ten game without Bo Ryan in over a decade); Iowa in West Lafayette. Go 15-0 and this is a surefire A+.

Isaac Haas: A+

If you asked the average college basketball fan to name the best player on Purdue, the answer you’d likely get is AJ Hammons. It wouldn’t be a terrible response — last season, Hammons led the Big Ten in blocked shots for the third straight year (only JaJuan Johnson and Penn State’s Calvin Booth have ever done that before). If you asked a recruiting guru, you might hear the name of blue chip freshman Caleb Swanigan, who has met or even exceeded the lofty expectations attached to him since stepping on campus. But neither of those two has been the most important Boilermaker so far. That notation belongs to Haas, the 7’2″ sophomore who has made the leap as a sophomore. Last season Haas’ offensive rating, per KenPom, was 95.1. So far this year, it’s a whopping 129.8 as he draws almost 9.8 fouls per 40 minutes, the highest average in the country. He’s improved his free throw percentage by 20 points (54.7 percent to 74.2 percent) and he’s making 10 percent more of his two-point attempts (63.3 percent this season) He and Hammons are both dominant on the boards and as shot blockers (Haas’ 8.5 percent block rate falls just a bit short of Hammons’ 10.1 percent) but it’s Haas who is the #5 player in the (very early) KenPom Player of the Year race.

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One of the biggest developments in the SEC this offseason was the star power added to the league’s coaching ranks, as no fewer than three programs added a head coach with an impressive pedigree. Mississippi State hired Ben Howland, a man who led UCLA to three straight Final Fours from 2006-08 and has won conference titles in the Big Sky, Big East and Pac 10/12. Tennessee quickly ended its tumultuous relationship with Donnie Tyndall and added a coach with a Final Four to his name as well (plus three Sweet Sixteens and two Elite Eights) in Rick Barnes. And after swinging and missing on Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall, Alabama was nonetheless able to win the press conference by hiring Avery Johnson, a former NBA Coach of the Year who led the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2006. Florida didn’t make a splashy hire, but the Gators replaced its legendary coach with Louisiana Tech’s Michael White — no stranger to the SEC after playing and coaching at Ole Miss.

Ben Howland inherits a better-than-you’d-think situation in Starkville (stationcaster.com).

Of the four, Howland and White are poised to have the biggest impacts this season. For Howland, this is in no small part because of the situation former Bulldogs’ head coach Rick Ray left him. It would have been more than understandable had Mississippi State stuck with Ray for at least another year. His three-year results weren’t great, but there had been incremental improvement: The Bulldogs won six SEC games under him last year (his highest total) and were poised to return a strong and experienced core that he had recruited and developed. But as cruel as it was for Ray to lose on the chance to continue building his program, it’s refreshing that Mississippi State strived for more — the type of ambition the league needs if it wants to raise its national profile. Howland arrived in Starkville and delivered right away, signing Jackson native Malik Newman (Rivals’ #8 overall prospect) away from the likes of Kentucky, Ole Miss and LSU.

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