Perception is everything. The Mountain West is currently fighting uphill. The ACC has long been fighting a media narrative. The Big Ten has been fighting it for decades, until the streak of years without a championship ends. Now it’s the SEC’s turn (again) to run through the gauntlet.
The first round of the NCAA Tournament has been utter madness, and the SEC has paid the price. It hasn’t been pretty.
First, No. 8 seed Mississippi State got waxed by Oregon. Then, No. 6 seed South Carolina got beat by Oregon. That was just the beginning.
No. 3 seed Kentucky got axed by Oakland on Thursday night. No. 4 seed Auburn got felled by No. 13 Yale on Friday. And then dangerous No. 7 seed Florida lost a 102-100 heartbreaker to No. 10 seed Colorado on a last-second game-winner from KJ Simpson.
So far the SEC is 2-5 in the NCAA Tournament. And all five losses have been to a lower-seeded team: No. 9 Michigan State, No. 11 Oregon, No. 14 Oakland, No. 13 Yale, No. 10 Colorado.
Only Tennesee and Alabama have won. The Volunteers easily took care of Saint Peter’s, 83-49, on Thursday, and Alabama put away the College of Charleston, 109-96.
There aren’t any correlations.
South Carolina had legit beef with the predictive metrics, all year long. It was rated the luckiest team in the country, per KenPom, largely due to its fabulous 11-3 record in two-possession games. It entered the tournament with one of the lowest ratings of any at-large bid and then got blown out by Oregon (and former Gamecock Jermaine Couisnard).
The metrics hated South Carolina and loved Auburn, rating the Tigers fourth nationally entering the tournament. Analytically, Auburn was as close to a perfect, well-rounded squad that you could find, landing 11th in adjusted offensive efficiency and fifth on the other end.
It didn’t end up mattering.
If Chad Baker-Mazara doesn’t get ejected for a vicious elbow or John Poulakidas doesn’t touch the heavens with 28 points or Tre Donaldson doesn’t miss two free throws or Denver Jones doesn’t miss the front end of a 1-and-1 or Johni Broome makes just one more shot, it’s a completely different story.
Auburn’s metrics couldn’t save it from the Madness. Yale, from the one big Ivy, pulled out the upset.
“I think just shock,” Auburn senior center Dylan Cardwell told Auburn Undercover’s Nathan King. “Just shock — not really being able to understand how much we underaccomplished. Just shock.”
South Carolina’s late-game good juju couldn’t save itself from the Madness. 30-foot bombs from Josh Hubbard couldn’t save Mississippi State. The defensive leaks that Florida and Kentucky showed in November came back into play in March.
“Disappointed because this group had the ability to make a little bit of a run,” Florida coach Todd Golden said after the loss. “We got a tough draw getting Colorado in this game. They’re 21st overall in KenPom. No other No. 10 seed is above 33rd. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. They’re a very good team. I expect them to play Marquette very well on Sunday.”
It happens. Bad draws and bad calls are always part of this.
Maybe there’s something correlated with the SEC having the highest free throw rate of any high-major conference in the country. Far too many SEC games turned into a free throw fest on a nightly basis. That kept the offensive efficiency marks spiking despite the SEC owning a meager 50.6 effective field goal percentage league-wide which ranked 19th out of 32 conferences and dead last (by a smidge) among the high-major leagues.
SEC teams shot just 33.5% from 3-point range in conference play. That ranked 24th nationally as a league and dead last amongst the high-majors.
Maybe there’s something there. Maybe there isn’t.
Maybe there’s something about how the SEC entered the season with the youngest rosters amongst the high-majors. It had 48 freshmen. The Pac-12 and ACC both had 40. The Big East and the Big Ten had 37. Maybe there’s nothing there.
There’s not just one thing to point at with four SEC Championship contenders falling to lower-seeded clubs in the NCAA Tournament. Maybe that’s just the point. It’s why this tournament is elite, cruel, and impossible to predict.
Don’t touch it, Greg Sankey.
