Conference basketball tournaments are just a couple weeks away, and it doesn’t appear that SEC teams are going anywhere.
That’s the consensus in the latest Bracketology from ESPN’s Joe Lunardi. For the fourth straight time, the NCAA Tournament analyst projected 8 SEC teams to make the field.
Here were the matchups Lunardi had for SEC teams:
- No. 11 Arkansas vs. No. 6 Miami (FL)
- No. 4 Tennessee vs. No. 13 Louisiana
- No. 7 Alabama vs. No. 10 Providence
- No. 9 Kentucky vs. No. 8 Butler
- No. 7 Texas A&M vs. No. 10 Virginia Tech
- No. 2 Auburn vs. No. 15 UNC Asheville
- No. 6 Florida vs. No. 11 USC/NC State
- No. 7 Missouri vs. No. 10 Kansas State
Trending up was Missouri (+2) while trending down was Arkansas (-1), Florida (-2) and Kentucky (-1). The Cats lost 4 straight SEC games, including a home loss to Auburn while Florida is coming off an overtime defeat to Georgia on Wednesday night.
For whatever reason Lunardi had Arkansas, which is riding a 3-game winning streak, down a seed from the other day.
Only the ACC had more teams (9) than the SEC in Lunardi’s latest projections.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
