Southeastern Conference (conference rank: 5th)
March 8-12
All games at Nashville, Tenn.
kPOY: Sindarius Thornwell, South Carolina.
Regular season champ: Kentucky (preseason #4 / 1st SEC, current #7)
Overachiever: Florida (preseason #17, current #6)
Underachiever: LSU (preseason #101, current #159)
Kentucky is on an eight-game winning yet their AdjEM rating (and ranking) has dropped slightly over that time. A seven-point home win to LSU is partly responsible for that and that’s a good example of the measurement error of margin-of-victory.
Kentucky led the game from start to finish and by as many as 25 in the second half. The Wildcats win probability (adjusted for the difference in both team’s ability) never dipped below 99%. The Tigers closed the gap in a meaningless part of the game and fooled my primitive computer and any others using margin of victory. Alas, there are always things to improve.
The SEC appears to have four bids locked up in Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, and Arkansas. Vanderbilt is attempting to become the first 15-loss team to get an at-large bid and would put themselves in position to do that with wins over Texas A&M and Florida.
The SEC hasn’t been ranked higher than 4th as a conference since 2007. It appears things might be headed in the right direction. Auburn showed signs of life for the first time under Bruce Pearl, and Bryce Drew and Rick Barnes had surprisingly good years in their first and/or second seasons in the league. But the reality is it’s tough to predict changes in conference strength and the inertia of a 14-team league is going to be strong.
Vandy gets half a home-court share for proximity purposes.
Rd1 Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 Kentucky 100 100 83.5 64.5 39.2 2 Florida 100 100 75.1 61.0 36.4 4 South Carolina 100 100 69.3 22.6 8.9 3 Arkansas 100 100 68.2 19.6 6.2 7 Vanderbilt 100 63.0 18.0 11.1 4.2 5 Alabama 100 66.3 23.5 5.1 1.4 8 Georgia 100 51.9 9.0 3.9 1.1 10 Texas A&M 100 37.0 6.9 3.3 0.9 9 Tennessee 100 48.1 7.5 3.1 0.8 6 Mississippi 100 56.7 19.1 3.1 0.6 11 Auburn 72.3 35.7 11.5 1.8 0.3 12 Mississippi St. 65.9 25.3 6.2 0.8 0.1 13 LSU 34.1 8.4 1.1 0.08 0.006 14 Missouri 27.7 7.6 1.3 0.09 0.004