With a quarter of the Southeastern Conference season remaining, Alabama has already locked up the West.
The Crimson Tide’s 69-56 win over Arkansas on Saturday moved it to 10-2 in the conference, a mark four games ahead of second-place Mississippi State with only four left to play.
“I’m very excited and proud of what our team has accomplished up to this point,” Alabama coach Anthony Grant said.
But Grant added his team still has plenty of work to do, saying “the home stretch is always going to be critical.”
Despite its success in SEC play, the Tide is still on the NCAA Tournament bubble due to an 8-6 record in the nonconference portion of its schedule.
“One game at a time is always the approach we’ve taken, and I think it’s the same thing now,” Grant said.
KENTUCKY’S ROAD WOES: Although Kentucky boasts one of the most talented rosters in the nation, the Wildcats are tied for third place in the SEC East after a 7-5 start in conference play.
Kentucky is just 1-5 away from Rupp Arena and sits three games behind first-place Florida.
“We’re a very young, inexperienced team,” UK coach John Calipari said. “We aren’t playing a whole lot of people, and we don’t have very much room for error.”
Calipari added that the challenge Kentucky faces in playing on the road is enhanced by the opposition’s fans, who are always energized to face one of the conference’s marquee teams.
Every road game the Wildcats play typically sells out, and Calipari said he already expects a “white-out or a red-out” against Arkansas, something UK has faced in a number of hostile venues.
Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings called Kentucky’s road mark “extremely deceptive,” citing the team’s talent and its margin of defeat.
But the fact that Kentucky’s conference road losses have come by an average of 3.4 points per game is no consolation to Calipari.
“We are what our record says we are,” he said.
SEC IN THE BIG DANCE: A number of recent NCAA Tournament projections have six SEC teams in the field of 68, leading a few coaches to speculate on where the conference ranks as a whole.
Although SEC basketball has been down the past few years, the consensus seems to be that this was the exception rather than the rule.
“This year is much more typical of who we are as a league,” Stallings said. “The bottom line is we’re always going to be one of the best leagues in college basketball.”
Stallings and Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl mentioned more difficult nonconference scheduling and a wealth of experience around the league as reasons for the conference’s return to prominence.
Pearl also referenced the Elite Eight appearances Tennessee and Kentucky made a season ago, as well as the parity of the league as a whole.
“Kentucky doesn’t have to win this league for the SEC to be strong,” Pearl said. “People recognize how good Kentucky is, but they also recognize that Kentucky has been challenged in the SEC. I think that makes a very strong statement about the depth and balance of our league.”
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JESSE SIMONTON
