SEC Preview: 2013-14 Year In Review
By cshenton
It really, truly, finally is (starting to be, about, almost) that time.
College hoops is on the precipice of (nearly) being here.
Okay, we may not actually be knocking on the door of the 2014-15 college basketball season…but we’re at the very least walking up the driveway, potluck-assigned potato salad in hand, along with a double helping of nervous, raring excitement to get underway with these 6 months, culminating in the capstone craziness of the one and only, March Madness.
And I couldn’t be more excited.
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It’s conference preview season here at Busting Brackets, and this SEC Conference Reset is the inaugural piece in our eponymous SEC Preview. Before we jump into the nitty gritty of projections, roster changes, and storylines heading into the season (that starts Friday), we figured it would be a good idea to refresh your memory on all the craziness of last season in the SEC. The NBA playoffs are exciting, baseball season is long, and football has flushed 95% of all other sports knowledge out of our heads. So it’s not a bad idea to revisit last season and remember just exactly what happened.
The Preseason Narrative: Kentucky, Florida, and Everyone Else
At the beginning of last season, the SEC was projected to be a two-horse race. The seasoned Gators of Florida and the highly-touted
Freshmen
Wildcats of Kentucky were expected to compete for the conference title all season long, and remain amongst the top ranked teams in the country to boot.
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For Florida, Scottie Wilbekin was projected as the leader of a team loaded with seniors, all of whom had played into the Elite 8 in every NCAA Tournament they’d been in school for. Wilbekin and fellow seniors Patric Young, Will Yeguete, and Casey Prather were expected to marshal the Gators through a relatively weak SEC and on to glory in the NCAA Tournament. The elders were also counting on help to come from sophomore sharpshooter Michael Frazier II as well as freshman Chris Walker, a top-15 recruit and 6’10” force of nature in the paint.
For Kentucky, aspirations were even higher. James Young. Julius Randle. Marcus Lee. Dakari Johnson. Andrew Harrison and Aaron Harrison, the twins. All 5-star recruits that John Calipari brought to Lexington for the 2013-14 season. But the Wildcats had been down that road before, with disasterous results. While the 2012-13 class wasn’t as highly regarded as this class, it was considered to be of a similar caliber. The 2012-13 Kentucky team was the first under Calipari to miss the Big Dance, settling for the NIT and an ignominous upset loss to Robert Morris in the first round. But the 2013-14 squad added a wrinkle that we hadn’t seen yet from a Calipari team: returning impact players. Willie Cauley-Stein and Alex Poythress returned for the Wildcats, despite significant NBA prospects in a weak draft class. This, combined with the freshmen coming in, had Big Blue Nation thinking one thing: championship.
As for the rest of the SEC, not much was expected. There was doubt as to if the conference could even get a third team into the tournament behind its big two.
Alabama was a popular choice, but whether they would have enough offense after Trevor Releford was a looming question mark. Tennessee was another common pick, but their talented core of Jordan McRae, Jarnell Stokes, and Josh Richardson had yet to coalesce for them, and it was unsure if they’d find the switch in 2013-14. Missouri had talent, but they were backcourt and wing-heavy, with Earnest Ross, Jabari Brown, and Jordan Clarkson all vying for touches and shots. LSU had intriguing, young, rhyming talent in Jordan Mickey and Anthony Hickey, but lacked a track record of success or enough contributors to really fill out the rotation.
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Hail Florida Hail
The hope for the conference was to have Kentucky and Florida at the top of the heap, and for a couple of surprises to rise out of the pack to challenge for tournament bids and maybe even sneak into the AP Top 25.
How It Actually Played Out: Two Roads Diverged In A Yellow Wood…
During the year, one of the SEC’s twin heavyweights rolled right on through the season and conference as expected, and one flailed mightily to retain their preseason bona fides.
Florida was the team that trounced their competition, losing only two games. Once was at Wisconsin without a full squad, as Wilbekin and Dorian Finney-Smith did not play. The Gators other loss came at Connecticut, on a last-second jumper by Shabazz Napier that essentially came out of a busted play, with the Gators’ best perimeter defender in Wilbekin on the bench with a sprain ankle. They ravaged all comers in conference play, going 18-0 and capturing the title and the #1 overall seed heading into the NCAA Tournament.
Kentucky, on the other hand, struggled to defeat top-level competition as they gelled as a team. They suffered 3 nonconference losses, to Michigan State, Baylor, and North Carolina. None of these was a crippling loss, but they were also the only opportunities for Kentucky to earn marquee nonconference wins. In conference play, the team struggled even more, losing 6 times: twice to Florida (not ideal), at LSU (not a good loss) twice to Arkansas (ouch), and at South Carolina (back-breaking). The Wildcats did not record a single victory over a ranked opponent during the regular season, and thus slipped out of the rankings. Although a one-point loss to Florida in the SEC Tournament title game solidified their place in the field of 68, they received only an 8-seed, and would have to fight their way through the hardest regional in the field to make any noise in the tournament.
As for that hoped-for third team? It proved to be Tennessee, after Alabama just couldn’t score enough, LSU was too inconsistent, and Missouri struggled against elite competition. A blowout win over Virginia in nonconference playe turned out to be quite the pretty feather in the Volunteers’ cap, despite 12 regular-season losses, and they were invited to Dayton to play in the First Four as an 11-seed.
Not a train wreck for the SEC by any stretch, but far from what was hoped for. They looked to the tournament to validate the league as a major conference and player on the national stage.
The Tournament: A Course Correction
That validation came in spades. All three SEC teams advanced to the Sweet 16 in convincing fashion. Florida rolled through 16-seed Albany and eviscerated 9-seed Pittsburg. Kentucky dispatched 9-seed Kansas State and edged out 1-seed Wichita State in possibly the most thrilling game of the tournament. Tennessee survived overtime with Iowa in the First Four, then sent 6-seed UMass home and solidly defeated upstart 14-seed Mercer to advance.
In the Sweet 16, Tennessee was clipped by 2-seed Michigan, in a phenomenal back-and-forth game that turned on a questionable offensive foul on Jarnell Stokes in crunch time. The team acquitted itself well, as well as advertising the level of play in the SEC throughout the year.
Apr 7, 2014; Arlington, TX, USA; Kentucky Wildcats forward Julius Randle (30) shoots the ball in the second half against the Connecticut Huskies during the championship game of the Final Four in the 2014 NCAA Mens Division I Championship tournament at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Pool Photo-USA TODAY Sports
Kentucky and Florida, two preseason Final Four contenders, found themselves exactly there. Florida breezed past 4-seed UCLA and 11-seed Dayton to earn its way through, and Kentucky knocked off the defending champions, 4-seed Louisville, as well as 2-seed Michigan (avenging Tennessee’s loss in the process) to book its ticket to college basketball’s biggest stage.
Just getting two teams to the Final Four wildly outpaced most people’s predictions for the SEC going into the tournament, and qualified as a victory for the conference. If either team could win it all, that would be a crowning accomplishment for both the team and the conference’s status as a basketball power.
In the first semifinal, the top-seeded Gators were edged out by the Connecticut Huskies team that had beaten them earlier in the year, behind the whirling dervish perimeter defense of Ryan Boatright and Shabazz Napier. In the second semifinal, however, Kentucky’s tournament of redemption continued as they outslugged Wisconsin for a shot at UConn and the national title. Alas for the SEC, the backcourt buzzsaw of Napier and Boatright proved too much for the young Kentucky guards, and UConn cut down the nets.
But the SEC had proven it belonged. The tournament runs made by its 3 representatives were a step forward for the conference. The goal for next season: to build off that success, and develop into a basketball conference that’s not only heavy at the top, but chock-full of solid teams and tournament threats.
Next up in our SEC Preview: What’s Changed Since Last Year – Departures and Newcomers, and How They Affect the Conference Landscape