Joe Lunardi updates projections for SEC teams ahead of Selection Sunday
Joe Lunardi updated his projections for the field of 68 early Sunday morning, just hours before the field of 68 will be fully revealed.
There are still a couple of big games to be played — including the SEC Tournament final — but the bracket is close to being set.
As of early Sunday morning, Lunardi is projecting 8 SEC teams to make the field of 68. Vanderbilt is also on the bubble and is in Lunardi’s “first four out” section.
Here’s where every SEC team is seeded:
- Alabama — No. 1 seed in the south
- Tennessee — No. 4 seed in the east
- Texas A&M — No. 5 seed in the west
- Kentucky — No. 7 seed in the west
- Missouri — No. 7 seed in the south
- Arkansas — No. 8 seed in the midwest
- Auburn — No. 10 seed in the east
- Mississippi State — No. 11 seed in the west
Mississippi State is also on the bubble ahead of Selection Sunday, but Lunardi has the Bulldogs projected to make the NCAA Tournament as one of the “last four teams in.” That means Mississippi State would head to Dayton for the play-in round. It would face Pittsburgh, per Lunardi’s projection.
The full field of 68 will be revealed at 6 p.m. ET on Sunday evening.
Vandy beat the last 3 teams in that list and had a was a higher seed in the SEC tournament. Had two more losses than Auburn because Vandy played more games and one more loss than Arkansas.
vandy deserves a lot of accolades for how they finished the season and i believe they’d fare well in a play-in game against one of the other last three in, but i could see both aub and ark potentially advancing to the sweet 16 with some hot shooting and breaks. i can’t say the same for vandy.
Vandy was definitely the team of the month and they were fun to watch down the stretch, but unfortunately the season isn’t just a month or month-and-a-half resume.
black and gold i hope you get in but its about a lot more than that.vandy may have waited a hair to late to turn things around.
Losing to Grambling and Southern Miss was bad but it was early. Losing to LSU was really bad, but it was on the road and that’s the only loss to a non SEC team not going to the tournament. Losing to Memphis, VCU and St Mary were good losses, because they are all tournament teams. Beating Pitt head to head helped as well. If Pitt gets in over Vandy, it’s BS. Who knows.
Vandy is the apitemy of a bubble team. Not a clear lock based on overall resume, but played good down the stretch to get in the conversation, which is right where they are on the bubble and in the conversation.
*epitome Lol holy cow
Given their performance in the last month of the season, why in the world would UT be seeded ahead of A&M?
I think it’s the whole issue with the metric systems like NET and KenPom. TN was really good through January and the metrics loved them and rewarded them for it. But it seems after Jan no matter how good or bad a team plays the metrics aren’t going to move much. How UT is still #4 in NET after losing TWICE to the #48 team (Mizzou) PLUS going 5-7 in Feb/March is quite baffling because like you eluded to, they’re a good team but not that good.
Vandy is having the opposite problem, the metrics hated them early on and as good as they’ve been lately it’s made no difference. They need to fix that because NET is being exposed big time as reflecting more teams wrong than they are accurately, at least after a certain point in the season.
I really didn’t go far enough. How can they be ahead of UK or Mizzou when they lost to both TWICE?
I expect UT will be no worse than a 5 seed, maybe even a 4. Not that they deserve it but so many seeds are locked in prior to the tournament.