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Paul Finebaum: SEC basketball entering ‘national championship or bust’ conversation for March Madness
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Paul Finebaum sees the pressure growing on SEC basketball this season — and for good reason. The league continues to dominate the AP Top 25 with Auburn operating as the nation’s No. 1 team for much of the season.
On a larger scale, it’s becoming not only more and more possible but also likely that the league grabs 3 of the available 1-seeds for the NCAA Tournament. With that kind of firepower, Finebaum admitted during his appearance for “McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning” that there would be a considerable level of disappointment if the SEC does not produce the national champion this year.
Auburn is still the betting favorite to cut down the nets this year per DraftKings, checking in at +360. While Duke and Houston round out the top 3 in those odds, Florida is 4th at +850 with Alabama (+1200) and Tennessee (+1600) giving the SEC 4 of the top 6 teams in the odds to win it all. Be sure to track all the odds with your favorite sports betting app.
It’s the kind of position Finebaum has not felt in the league in a decade since Kentucky tried to complete a wire-to-wire run as the No. 1 team in the country during the 2014-15 season. That star-studded group for John Calipari went 38-1 with the only loss coming in the national semifinals to Wisconsin.
“There is going to be unbelievable expectations, and with unbelievable expectations, we can be led to a possible letdown,” said Finebaum about the pending NCAA Tournament. “And I almost feel like if the SEC does not win the national championship this year in college basketball, it is going to be considered a disappointment. Nowhere other than perhaps 2015 can you ever make that statement when the University of Kentucky was undefeated and trying to go wire-to-wire.”
While the expectations can create an area for disappointment, it’s still a net positive for the league per Finebaum. He reflected on previous years when the SEC hoped to scrape together a few quality teams with hopes for maybe one team to put together a deep run in March Madness.
“That’s how great this league is, and I think it’s good. Instead of many years past hoping to get 3 or 4 teams in the NCAA Tournament… we’ve never been at this precipice before and quite frankly no one ever has,” Finebaum explained. “I don’t want to say it’s ‘national championship or bust,’ but it is about time the SEC won a national championship in basketball considering it hasn’t happened in 12 years.”
Before we get to the Big Dance, however, the SEC Basketball Tournament looms in Nashville, and seeding is still up for grabs in the league. Auburn holds a 2-game lead over Florida and Alabama for the regular season title and No. 1 overall seed in the tournament with 4 games left on the schedule.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
