ESPN Analytics believes SEC basketball fans might be in for a classic finish on Saturday afternoon when No. 25 Vanderbilt heads to Lexington for a crucial late-season showdown with Kentucky.
Both teams are in need of victories as the SEC Tournament approaches, and the 2 p.m. ET tipoff on ESPN will feature 2 squads who are both sitting at 9-6 in the conference. Two other teams, Mizzou and Texas A&M, are also 9-6 in the SEC with a little over a week to go in the regular season, so Saturday’s matchup at Rupp Arena will help separate that current logjam of 4 teams fighting for seeding in the conference tournament.
Perhaps it’s the home-court advantage or perhaps it’s Kentucky’s general sense of urgency with already having 10 losses this season, but ESPN’s BPI is giving a slight lean to Big Blue Nation on Saturday. The Wildcats (18-10) are being given a 56.4% chance to hold serve at home against the Commodores. UK is trying to distance itself from a recent 3-game losing streak that threatened to derail its regular season, and a win Saturday would be its 2nd in a row after Tuesday night’s road victory over South Carolina.
Meanwhile, Vanderbilt (22-6) is trying to do something similar on Saturday. The Commodores dropped 2 in a row last week to Mizzou and Tennessee, but they got a huge bounce-back victory on Wednesday night at home against Georgia and now head to the Bluegrass State to try to cancel out that skid.
They’ll be facing a desperate Kentucky team that knows it now has double-digit losses this season and doesn’t want to add to that total, especially at home and especially with its NCAA Tournament hopes hanging in the balance.
And as the cherry on the cake, Vanderbilt will be going for the season sweep of Kentucky, having already throttled the Wildcats by 25 points a month ago in Nashville.
Here is what Kalshi believes will happen on Saturday afternoon in Lexington in the critical late-season SEC matchup:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
