SEC releases bracket, schedule for men's basketball tournament in Nashville
Nate Oats’ Alabama team will take its blue-collar approach to Nashville as the favorite in this week’s men’s basketball SEC Tournament.
Alabama overcame 22 turnovers on Saturday to beat Georgia and match its school record for SEC wins in the 1986-87 season. The Crimson Tide will take a three-game winning streak and the No. 1 seed into next week’s SEC Tournament in Tennessee. They finished the regular season 21-6 overall, and 16-2 in league play.
Oats said after the game that the slow start will be a teaching point entering the SEC Tournament.
“We can’t afford in Nashville to come out like we did,” he said. “For us to finish at 16-2 in the SEC and tie for the most wins in school history shows a lot of what this team is made of. We have to get back to playing more like we did in the second half than we did in the first half when we get to Nashville.”
Another contender for the title is Arkansas, which comes in riding an 11-game winning streak including a win over Alabama. The Razorbacks knocked off Texas A&M on Saturday.
“The general fan doesn’t understand how hard it is to win 11 games in a row in league play,” Arkansas coach Eric Musselman said, per the Associated Press. “Trust me, it’s difficult. Did we play great tonight? No. We played well enough to win and we buckled down the stretch when we had to get defensive stops.”
Arkansas is expected to be a top-six for the NCAA Tournament, but could play its way into a top two or three seed with a deep SEC run.
Here is the bracket:
So I’m guessing Auburn just said “F’ it”?
Auburn is not eligible for the conference tournament because they aren’t eligible for the ncaa tournament.
That’s right, I forgot about their postseason ban.
Is that just an SEC ban? Because some transitional schools in the Atlantic Sun (Bellarmine and North Alabama) played in the ASUN tourney, in fact North Alabama made it all the way to the final. And these schools aren’t allowed into March Madness. I guess it must be a conference thing…
It’s a post season ban, meaning the ncaa tournament. The SEC is obviously smarter than those other conferences. It can only hurt a conference if a team not eligible for the ncaa tournament were to win the conference tournament.
Does anybody else think that basketball season should have been over a long long time ago and football season went by way to fast? Even if we couldn’t make football season longer, get some (SEC) track and field on TV or more baseball or some golf, (Missouri needs to have their run at a national championship wrestling year on TV every Saturday). I don’t want to see a three, sometimes 4 game ‘best of’ between every possible combo of SEC basketball opponents every freakin year. Since men don’t play volleyball, in the SEC anyway, then gets some women’s volleyball on the tube in prime time. You have to love it when the big masher goes unblocked at the net and half a dozen players are staring down the bore. Just save me from even one more basketball game where everything is made up as it goes along and coaches have no idea what is going to happen next, refs have to much power to decide what body contact fouls are, players have few consistent fundamental techniques, 5 players play but 25 suit up. Shooting technique is all over the realm of possibility. Name another sport that has gone so far backwards in the last couple decades. And why is it considered special when a player who can stand under the basket and touch the net without jumping jumps about a foot off the ground, and with his hands, puts the ball thru a hoop a foot and a half wide. If the sport wants to be on TV this long every year, it needs to give us something talented and smart to watch.
No. Basketball gets the position it does because it is the second best sport behind football. If the SEC Network wants to lose money then it will show fewer basketball games and more volleyball, wrestling, and track and field, because no one will watch that stuff. Who cares what you think about the sport, its the facts.
And you’re also wrong about “3 sometimes 4 game best of.” In the SEC, you play 5 teams twice, the other 8 teams once. The only way you’ll get 4 games against an SEC team is twice regular season, once in SEC Tournament, and once in the NCAA or NIT tourneys. That like never happens, maybe once a decade.
Well this is the crap take of the year. Primetime volleyball over basketball is actually hilarious.