Three ranked SEC teams sitting out Big 12 Challenge
The fifth time was the charm for the Southeastern Conference, as the league last January won six of the 10 men’s basketball matchups during the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
With the sixth competition scheduled for Saturday, the SEC isn’t exactly putting its best foot forward. The league has a robust six teams in the latest Associated Press Top 25, but three of those — Auburn (No. 16), Mississippi State (No. 22) and LSU (No. 25) — are sitting out the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
“It’s certainly important for the national narrative about our league that you win the Big 12 Challenge,” LSU coach Will Wade said Thursday, “and when you don’t have some of your best teams in there, it doesn’t give you the best chance to win it and to have that narrative. At the same time, there are a lot of logistical issues that go into it involving people who are a lot smarter than I am.
“We’ll certainly be rooting for all the SEC teams who are playing the Big 12 teams.”
With the SEC containing 14 members and the Big 12 just 10, four SEC programs have to sit out the Challenge and play each other instead. The four SEC teams missing out are the same four that missed out a year ago, with the quartet being determined by the league’s 2016-17 standings.
Two years ago, Auburn (7-11), Mississippi State (6-12), LSU (2-16) and Missouri (2-16) finished 11th through 14th in the conference race. The final four teams in this season’s SEC standings will miss out on the Big 12/SEC Challenges in 2020 and 2021.
“If you do it on a one-year basis and were in it this year and had to go on the road, and then we weren’t in it — you just could end up with imbalanced schedules,” said Wade, a former University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga coach. “This way, you get one at home and one on the road. It’s not as easy as just putting everybody in it.”
Said Auburn coach Bruce Pearl: “The league did everything it could to be fair, and it’s just an unfortunate set of circumstances. Nobody has a crystal ball. We obviously have 14 teams and they have 10 teams, so four teams have to be left out.”
The SEC was a wretched 10-20 against the Big 12 after the first three years of the Challenge but is 11-9 since. The extravaganza took place the first two years in early December but has since been held in late January on the weekend between the NFL’s conference title games and its Super Bowl.
“Playing these games in January has helped us compared to playing them in late November or early December, when all people want to talk about on every SEC campus is football,” South Carolina’s Frank Martin said. “The Big 12 was great and was willing to give it a go, and I think that has really helped us.”
Kentucky’s John Calipari isn’t as fond of the timetable change, saying, “We don’t need something in the middle of our league that takes us away from league play to prove how good we are or how good we’re not.”
The SEC’s improved
“The league did everything it could to be fair, and it’s just an unfortunate set of circumstances. ... We obviously have 14 teams and they have 10 teams, so four teams have to be left out.”
– AUBURN COACH BRUCE PEARL
standing against the Big 12 has coincided with a better showing in NCAA play, with the league producing three Elite Eight teams in 2017 and having eight participants in last year’s 68-team field. Alabama beat Oklahoma in last year’s Challenge in a pairing of two eventual top-10 NBA draft picks — Collin Sexton and Trae Young — while the marquee matchup Saturday will be No. 9 Kansas at No. 8 Kentucky.
“I think it’s really big for the conference as a whole and a lot of us individually that have opportunities that we may not have otherwise had,” Florida’s Mike White said. “We have a chance to get a quality win on the road if we play well. The success we’ve had as of late speaks to the growth of basketball in the SEC.
“We had a great year last year and are hoping for similar success this year.”