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10 Things I’m absolutely overreacting to after Week 3 of SEC basketball
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To all the SEC fans disappointed with the 12-team College Football Playoff and the trending discussion point that the B1G, not the SEC, now rules college football, may I offer you a bit of free advice?
Shift the conversation to college basketball.
There was plenty of pushback when, all the way back in October, yours truly wrote that the SEC would be the nation’s best college basketball league in 2024-25. There’s no debate now.
The SEC is an absolute wagon in men’s hoops this season, with 5 top-10 teams, 9 top 25 teams, and a KenPom conference Net Rating of 21.07, nearly 3.5 points above the second-best league, the B1G (17.66).
With football on the rearview, there are 7 1/2 weeks until Selection Sunday. Enjoy the ride.
Hopefully, this column, featuring 10 things I am absolutely overreacting to after 3 weeks of league play, helps catch those of you just adjusting to life without college football up to what’s been going on in the SEC.
10. The Egg Bowl of Hoops, Round 1 was incredible basketball
There have been some exceptional basketball games this season, but count the first edition of the hoops Egg Bowl among the best to date.
The game had a little of everything in a splendid rivalry setting in Starkville.
Riley Kugel, a gargantuan talent who struggled with consistency at Florida, has found the right situation at State, and he hit an to help Miss State rally and take a lead late in regulation.
Mystifyingly, though, Chris Jans elected not to foul Ole Miss up 3 with just 9 seconds remaining, allowing Matthew Murrell to bury a 3 and force overtime. Ole Miss took an early lead in OT, but Kugel connected on a second massive jumper in the extra session to give the Bulldogs a lead they’d never relinquish.
A sensational game between 2 excellent teams, and I can’t wait for round 2 in Oxford on Feb. 15.
9. A cardiac Wednesday night in the SEC
The 3 SEC games on Wednesday night were decided by a combined 5 points.
In 2 of the games, Florida at South Carolina and Texas A&M at Ole Miss, the winning team only led once — the final score.
All 3 of the games featured double-digit second half comebacks.
No. 5 Florida got things started when they rallied from a 13 point-deficit with 8 minutes remaining to stave off South Carolina 70-69 in snowy Columbia. Florida’s only lead came on this stupendous drive and finish by Will Richard.
Richard finished with a game-high 22 points to go with 4 rebounds and 3 steals.
Todd Golden’s switch to a 1-2-2 press midway through the second half saved the Gators, as Florida forced 10 second-half turnovers in their rally. Many of those turnovers led to easy baskets.
South Carolina battles at Colonial Life. This is the second time this month the Gamecocks have had a chance to beat a top-5 team at home, as they lost by 3 to Auburn in the final minute on Jan. 11. But while South Carolina’s frontcourt, led by likely first-round NBA Draft pick Collin Murray-Boyles, is elite, the Gamecocks don’t have the type of guard play you need to survive in the SEC. Lamont Paris’ team is now the lone winless team in the SEC because …
8. Arkansas rallies past Georgia — what does that mean for the Dawgs?
Arkansas won a game!!
The Razorbacks rallied from 15 points down to stun Georgia at Bud Walton Arena. Adou Thiero had 17 points and 11 rebounds in the win for the Hogs, who played for the first time without star guard Boogie Fland (more below). Thiero was fouled with 2 seconds left in the game, made a free throw to give the Razorbacks the lead, and then got his own miss on the second foul shot and laid it in to put an exclamation point on the comeback win.
While the win keeps Arkansas’ fleeting NCAA Tournament hopes alive, it feels more like an inflection point for Georgia.
Mike White’s team battles hard. They are physical and outstanding defensively. But they suffer extended scoring droughts often and turn the ball over too frequently. The turnovers were the kiss of death that saw the Dawgs cough up big road leads at Tennessee and Arkansas in back-to-back weeks. Georgia’s NCAA status remains safe, but Georgia has to protect the ball to reach its lofty ceiling. It doesn’t get any easier for Georgia, which visits No. 5 Florida on Saturday. White is 0-5 against his former program.
7. Those Texas A&M Aggies are really good
Finally, I am not sure we talk enough about just how good the Texas A&M Aggies are.
A&M rallied from down 11 to win at Ole Miss on Wednesday night, stealing a victory on this onions moment from -.
The man Buzz Williams calls “O” had made just 5-of-26 triples before last night’s trip to Oxford, when he went 2-for-3 from deep, including the game-winner. Obaseki is a defensive stopper who can also score on a team chock full of such players and led by an All-American candidate in Wade Taylor IV, the 2023 preseason SEC Player of the Year.
IV, as Buzz calls him, had a rough night. He shot 2-for-12 from the floor and turned the ball over 5 times, hounded by outstanding Ole Miss defender Matthew Murrell in 1-on-1 situations consistently. A year ago, the Aggies wouldn’t have survived that type of poor showing from IV. Last night, they beat a terrific Ole Miss team in spite of it.
In other words, the Aggies are deeper and more prolific offensively than last year’s group, which shot the ball poorly but was good enough in every other area to nearly upset 1 seed Houston in the Round of 32. Now, with more scoring help for Taylor IV across the board, a tenacious rebounding team that can negate the team’s shooting flaws, and one of the SEC’s best X and O coaches in Williams, the Aggies are bona fide Final Four contenders.
6. Team of the Week: Alabama Crimson Tide
What a difference a week makes.
After Ole Miss humbled the Crimson Tide in Coleman Coliseum last Tuesday night, limiting the Tide to a season-low .84 points per possession and handing Alabama its first double-digit home loss since 2022, it might have been tempting for Nate Oats to shake things up.
Instead, the Crimson Tide stayed the course and responded with aplomb, besting then No. 8 Kentucky 102-97 in a thriller at Rupp Arena and punctuating that big win with a 103-point outburst and 16-point victory over a confident Vanderbilt team fresh off a win over No. 6 Tennessee back in the friendly confines of Coleman on Tuesday night.
Remember November, when Mark Sears was struggling so badly he pulled himself out of a game against Illinois and went 1-for-11 from deep in a loss to Oregon?
I don’t either.
Sears has been spectacular of late, averaging 22.5 points per game in Alabama’s 2 wins this past week while dishing out 16 assists and committing just 1 turnover. He eclipsed 2,500 career points in the Tide’s win over the Commodores.
That’s the guy many of us expected to win SEC Player of the Year and contend for the Wooden Award.
What’s more, while the loss of Latrell Wrightsell means Alabama won’t shoot it as well as Oats would like, the Crimson Tide are starting to get important contributions from the likes of Chris Youngblood (4-for-9 from deep over the past 2 games, with 9 ppg in 22.5 minutes per game) and Oats continues to get the best out of Auburn transfer Aden Holloway. A former 5-star recruit, Holloway is much more comfortable providing instant scoring as one of a number of ball handlers than he ever was running the point at Auburn. He had 22 in the win over Vanderbilt on Tuesday, and he’s scored in double digits in all but 1 of Alabama’s SEC wins.
Alabama still doesn’t guard like a national champion — just 46th in KenPom Defensive Efficiency. But the Crimson Tide are special on offense end and very much one of a handful of teams good enough from a talent, execution, and experience standpoint to cut down the nets in April.
5. Pour one out for Boogie Fland and everyone in Razorback Country, to be honest
Boogie Fland, we hardly knew ye.
Arkansas announced Tuesday that the freshman guard is out for the season due to a hand injury originally suffered in a 71-63 home loss to Florida earlier this month. Fland tried to play through the injury but ultimately decided it would be best for his future if he sat out to let the hand heal. Fland is expected to be taken in the first round of the NBA Draft this summer.
The 6-2 guard from New York City was averaging 15.1 points and 5.7 assists per game this season, one of the few bright spots for an Arkansas team that now stands 1-5 the league after Wednesday night’s comeback win over Georgia. John Calipari has been unable to figure out how to get the best out of preseason All-American Johnell Davis, who is averaging just 8.4 points per game and shooting a career low 39% from the field after transferring to Arkansas as the nation’s top-rated transfer from FAU last spring.
Arkansas is a proud fan base and 1 of only 3 SEC programs to win the NCAA Tournament. These terrific fans deserve better than what John Calipari is delivering after spending $38 million to bring the Hall of Famer to Fayetteville to Lexington last April.
4. The home environments are fantastic
SEC home teams went 10-4 this week, continuing a trend of home floor dominance that extends to the nonconference, when the league went a staggering 125-2 at home. On the season, SEC home teams are 155-21. That’s an 88%-win percentage, though it dips to “just” 61% in league play.
An important contributing factor in the rise of the SEC has been electric, intimidating home environments.
From the cavernous and hallowed halls of Rupp to the intimate, hot, hellishly loud Neville Arena to the creative insanity of Rowdy Reptiles in Gainesville and the Antlers in CoMo, there’s no shortage of brutal places to play in the SEC.
Your loyal scribe has been to 13 of the SEC’s 16 hoop halls and for my money, there’s no venue quite as daunting as Thompson-Boling Arena at the Food City Center in Knoxville. Seating nearly 22,000 orange-clad fanatics when full, Thompson-Boling is louder than most venues by virtue of being double or nearly double the capacity of many SEC venues. Volunteers hoops fans are loyal, too, and as likely to fill the building on a weeknight as they are on SEC basketball Saturdays. Tennessee has lost just 4 times at home since the beginning of the 2021-22 season, a testament of the venue’s toughness.
3. Where I eat when enjoying a SEC basketball weekend in … Auburn, Alabama
Niffers is always a fine choice for burgers and craft adult beverages, but Auburn has become one of the better food scenes among SEC college towns. It makes sense, honestly. The school’s agricultural roots and location in close proximity to both homegrown produce and meat from Alabama and Georgia farmers and fresh seafood from the Gulf of Mexico made it fertile ground for a burgeoning farm and dock to table restaurant scene.
Amsterdam Café was a staple before the food scene even took off, but it is James Beard Award nominated chef David Bancroft’s new project, Acre, in beautiful, historic downtown Auburn, that is a showstopper. With a locally sourced to the table menu that features everything from spiced Gulf Cobia in a pecan brown butter and sweet potato puree to a perfect, succulent braised short rib, there’s something for every appetite. And yes, of course there are fried green tomatoes.
This is Alabama, after all.
2. The SEC’s 12 — yes, 12 — NCAA Tournament teams will be:
Auburn, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Kentucky, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Missouri, Georgia, Vanderbilt and Texas. Yes, Oklahoma could make it 13. Stay tuned.
1. League awards, through 3 weeks
Best 6:
Johni Broome (Auburn)
Mark Sears (Alabama)
Zakai Zeigler (Tennessee)
Walter Clayton Jr. (Florida)
Chaz Lanier (Tennessee)
Otega Oweh (Kentucky)
Player of the Year: Broome
Freshman of the Year: Asa Newell (Georgia)
Defensive Player of the Year: Alijah Martin (Florida)
Coach of the Year: Mark Pope (Kentucky)
Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
