The SEC season is upon us, and it may be one of the best times of the year because truly anything can happen in the SEC, the league may be down, but still, the teams in the league usually come out punching when the Kentucky Wildcats come to town, let’s take a look at the teams Kentucky will face this season in the SEC and how they preformed up until this point, in order of when Kentucky plays these teams:
South Carolina (8-6): Darrin Horn isn’t bringing his best squad into Rupp Arena Saturday, that is for sure, but he is bringing a squad who has already played some good teams this year. While coming in at 8-6, South Carolina has already played power houses like North Carolina and Ohio State. While losing to both, South Carolina hung around against Ohio State and lost to single digits at home, but they’ve also dropped some horrible games to Tenn. State and Elon. They do come in to Kentucky riding a four game winning streak to give them a little credibility.
Auburn (10-4): Surprisingly Auburn comes in with a solid record, but the schedule they have played isn’t for the weak at heart, in fact the best team they have played is Florida St. University, which they lost in a blow-out fashion. Although going to Hawaii and picking up a win is impressive, a tougher schedule is needed to figure out where this team stands, as it’s a mystery at the moment how good this team really is, but they do have two players scoring in double digits.
Tennessee (7-7): This isn’t a Tennessee team that many fans have witnessed over the last couple of years; it’s nowhere near that team actually. They don’t have a notable win on the year, but earlier in the season they played Duke to the wire and literally played Memphis, their rival in Maui into two overtimes which was impressive. I was ready to call Tennessee for real until the next stretch of the pre-conference schedule saw losses to Austin Peay and Oakland, and with a chance to put it back against Memphis at Memphis they couldn’t pull it off and lost 69-51. Bruce Pearl isn’t walking through that door.
Arkansas (10-3): The Razorbacks may be a little over looked coming into conference play with a nice record with only three wins. At a glance, they may be a contender in the west this year, but in reality they’ve only really played three top-notch BCS schools, if you can even call them that, and they lost to two of them by double digits, and one of them by nine. The cupboard isn’t empty though, Marshawn Powell is a specimen and is scoring 19 points per game and may be a dark horse to win player of the year.
Alabama (11-3): An excellent team that has picked up some great wins against BCS opponents, but one lingering problem continues to haunt them, three points shooting. Despite having Trevor Lacey who can light it up, Alabama just cannot find it from deep that often, but have shown flashes of being able to do so. They are an athletic bunch who jumped out to 7-0 on the year before seeing their first loss, and honestly should give the Cats a lot of problems when they come into Rupp Arena, and for that matter will give a lot of teams in the SEC problems. It should be interesting to see how this team comes out of the gate in conference.
Georgia (9-5): Georgia is another team who has probably failed their non-conference schedule if you are giving them a grade. While Mark Fox has led them to nine wins, the teams that they have played, and lost too are the story. They have lost to every ranked team they have played this season, and they don’t really do anything special on offense or defense to stick out among the rest of the SEC teams, while Trey Thompkins and C.J Leslie moved on to the NBA, look for this to be a rebuilding season in the SEC for Georgia.
LSU (10-4): This team may be a dark horse, for me at least to make some noise this year in the SEC simply because I watched them play a solid Marquette team and run them out of the building, I mean it was a route. Earlier, I watched them lose to Coastal Carolina and then to Northwestern, but after that they rattled off seven wins in a row later on in the season, and beat some decent teams in the process. A solid core of athletic players in the front and back court will cause me to look for LSU to be in the running when it matters in the SEC tournament.
Florida (12-3): I’m almost willing to bet that Kentucky drops at least one game to Florida this year, and that one may be at Florida. I just don’t see how this Kentucky team can go out and guard the three pointers that Florida launches up. Sure they lost to Rutgers and that was pretty bad, but I was asked on the radio what team I was worried about, and I said Florida, not so much Vanderbilt, not so much Alabama, but Florida worries me, a scrappy team that can shoot the three, and they’ve been tested this season. They beat Texas A&M pretty bad, and got routed by Ohio State at the beginning of the year and then lost to Rutgers so consistency may be an issue for them, but don’t say I didn’t tell you when they hit about 12 threes against Kentucky in Gainesville.
Vanderbilt (10-4): It doesn’t matter what I saw about Vanderbilt because I’m going to say that when the Kentucky Wildcats go to Vandy for the College Gameday, game of the week, then Vandy will play out of their minds as always. Festus Ezeli will be draining threes, Jeffery Taylor won’t miss, it just always happens like that, but other than how they will play out of their minds, they’ve failed every major test put in front of them this year. A chance to beat Louisville, failed. A chance to beat Xavier, failed. While they have the pieces to have a good team, maybe they are waiting around to mesh during the SEC play, we will find out soon enough.
Ole Miss (10-4): Not much to write about the Rebels. They haven’t played anyone of notice, but one Penn. State team that Kentucky also played, they won that game by two points if that says anything. Ole Miss may have a nice record coming into the SEC, but they haven’t played anyone worth noting besides Marquette, who they lost to. They have the coolest player name though, Dundrecous Nelson, and he’s a nice player too.
Mississippi State (13-2): Record wise, they may be coming in the second best team in the SEC, but don’t let it fool you. While ranked 16th in the nation at the moment, I’ll give the Bulldogs this, they were impressive in wins over Arizona and Texas A&M, but man they only put up 52 points against Baylor and only lost by two, I watched that game and it wasn’t so much defense as it was sloppy play on both sides. I will say that I stated watching that game that Miss. State will give some teams a hard time in the SEC, including Kentucky with their style of play, plus Renardo Sydney is literally a load for Anthony Davis to handle, seriously, the guy is huge and only seems to get wider.
So there you have it, something to look forward to in the SEC, this is one of the most random fields that I’ve seen in some time. There is some favorites, but look for quite a few upsets and at the end of the year we should be surprised at what teams are on top, and what teams have losing records.