SEC has questions entering league play
As the Southeastern Conference prepares to begin league competition in men’s basketball, this much seems clear: Kentucky’s freshman class is as good as advertised.
But there are plenty of questions surrounding the rest of the league as it tries to bounce back from a 2015-16 season in which the SEC earned only three NCAA tournament invitations.
Only two SEC teams are in the Top 25 : No. 6 Kentucky and No. 22 South Carolina. The Gamecocks could fall out of the rankings after last Wednesday’s 62-60 loss to Clemson, which marked the first time the Tigers ever had beaten a ranked nonconference opponent on the road.
Other teams have shown promise but still have questions to answer as the SEC prepares to start league play Thursday.“I think the league is really competitive,” Florida coach Mike White said. “We’ve come up on the short end in a few big games, but we’ve been really competitive, I think, against some of the best teams in the country.”
This is the first time the SEC has played conference games as early as December since the 1991-92 season.
As usual, much of the attention involving the SEC surrounds Kentucky, which starts four freshmen and a sophomore. One Kentucky freshman (Malik Monk) leads the SEC in scoring, while another (De’Aaron Fox) tops the conference in assists.
Monk set a Kentucky freshman single-game scoring record with 47 points in a 103-100 victory over No. 8 North Carolina. That was the highest single-game total by an SEC freshman since LSU’s Chris Jackson had 55 against Ole Miss on March 4, 1989.
Just where these newcomers rank among previous Kentucky freshman classes during John Calipari’s coaching tenure remains uncertain. Kentucky has some impressive wins but also lost at home to No. 2 UCLA and at No. 10 Louisville.
“They have to go through these kinds of growing pains, and then I’ve got to be able to see what I have to do as a coach,” Calipari said after the Louisville game.
Texas A&M shared the SEC regular-season title with Kentucky last season. The Aggies should know in a hurry whether they’re good enough to contend for a league championship again. After hosting Tennessee on Thursday in their SEC opener, the Aggies visit Kentucky and South Carolina in their next two games.
The good news for Texas A&M is that it plays in the SEC and not the Pac-12. All three of the Aggies’ three losses thus far have come against Pac-12 schools (No. 23 Southern California, UCLA and No. 18 Arizona).
Auburn has taken a major step forward in the third year of Bruce Pearl’s coaching tenure. The Tigers beat both Oklahoma and Connecticut in the last week to improve their record to 10-2, their best start since 2002-03. Auburn is one win away from matching its victory total from last season, when the Tigers finished 11-20.