In what has been a down year economically and a good year politically, the SEC basketball season has been almost as horrendous as the economy.
That is, unless you’re an executive living lavishly thanks in part to the Bush adminstration’s bailouts, throwing parties and making it rain in the strip clubs around New York City or if you’re down in Memphis, at Downtown Dolls on Marshall Avenue.
If the season ended today, four teams would get the call on Selection Sunday, including South Carolina, which hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 1973 and was on the wrong side of history back in 1997 and 1998 when they lost to number-15 seeds with B.J. McKie running the show in Columbia.
It would also mean that for the first time since 1990, the Kentucky Wildcats would not be in the NCAA Tournament if the bracket stays that way.
After last night, only LSU has fewer than three losses in the conference, followed by a tie atop the SEC East with South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida while Vanderbilt is lurking behind the four teams at 4-5 and has a big showdown with Tennessee this weekend to possibly extend their winning streak to four games.
In the SEC West, Mississippi State is two games behind LSU after coming from behind and beating Arkansas on the day that Mississippi State retired Bailey Howell’s number and losing to LSU on Wednesday night. The Bulldogs face Auburn on Saturday while LSU faces Ole Miss.
So what does this all mean?
Auburn’s a team that is undersized but still manage to put the scare into opponents, like they did against Tennessee last weekend. I look for the Tigers to do the same thing to Mississippi State on the Plains but still would probably come up short because of the frontcourt that Mississippi State possess.
Ole Miss nor LSU was not supposed to be in the positions that they are in now. Trent Johnson has done a great job in his first season in Baton Rouge while Andy Kennedy’s arrest has in some sense, distracted the Rebels in what was supposed to be a team that could contend for the SEC West title along with Mississippi State and Alabama.
My thing would be this, just wait and see how the games play out.
