SEC Basketball: Race for first place is heating up
The SEC basketball regular season title is still up for grabs, but the race is beginning to tighten up between a few teams.
After South Carolina’s win over the mighty Ben Simmons and LSU they’ve earned themselves a share of the SEC’s number one spot. Along with the Tigers and Kentucky Wildcats, the Gamecocks are atop the leaderboard with an 8-3 conference record.
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But with a big weekend ahead in conference play this 3-way tie won’t last long. John Calipari and his Wildcats are set to face off against South Carolina, which guarantees one of them will separate themselves from the group.
If you don’t know much about these teams the easy guess is to say Cal’s Cats will prevail. But Kentucky is inconsistent on the road, they are lacking a low post presence (yes I’m aware of Skal Labissiere but no one else is), they have zero attention to detail, and they lose themselves in close games.
Calipari has said it best; they don’t know how to win. They are 2-1 in their last three games winning against Georgia 82-48 and Florida 80-61 and losing to Tennessee 84-77. Both of their wins came at home (again they are inconsistent on the road).
South Carolina’s coming off two huge wins (emphasis on the word huge). Their win against LSU was big but earlier in the week they beat Texas A&M…in College Station. Now I have an opinion about coming off big wins and please keep in mind it is just an opinion, but teams handle this one of two ways – they either build on it or are nearly unbeatable, or their heads blow up to disproportional sizes and they blow a chance at greatness.
Of course I’m being dramatic but you get the point I’m trying to make.
Joking aside, the most important thing to know about this South Carolina team is that they have depth. Their freshmen aren’t afraid of big moments and they proved that against LSU on Wednesday.
The other key Saturday matchup is between LSU and Texas A&M. So what should be looked at first, the implosion of A&M or Ben Simmons? I’ve always been told bad news first is best so here we go.
I can’t exactly tell you what has happened to Texas A&M the last three games, but it isn’t pretty. They are heading into this matchup against LSU off a 3-game losing streak. They lost to Alabama 63-62, before that it was South Carolina 81-78, and before that it was Vanderbilt 77-60. Yes they lost to Vanderbilt by 17 points.
All three loses can be chalked up to terrible finishes. Anthony Collins – who is a 93.8 percent free throw shooter – missed both; yes both free throws in the final seconds of their game Wednesday. To explain the seriousness of that please reference the tweet below…
Get it? OK, the question we may all have to answer is whether or not the Aggies were overhyped. Just two weeks ago they were the No. 5 team in the country. Today they could possibly be bumped from the top 25 all together.
The one thing this team has going for them is they are led by a group of seniors, and as history has shown, experience goes a long way in March.
Which brings up our final team tied at the top, Ben Simmons… mean LSU. Let’s face it this team is Ben Simmons and Ben Simmons is this team. The one problem with that is he doesn’t always take on that aggressive role. Even when he does it sometimes still isn’t enough, as we saw in the game against South Carolina. Even Dwyane Michael Carter Jr. (Lil Wayne) has an opinion on Simmons’ play. Again please see the tweet below.
Ben Simmons a beast but he gotta start being more assertive...but Buddy Hield is da absolute truth.
— Lil Wayne WEEZY F (@LilTunechi) January 31, 2016
The SEC may not be the most entertaining conference in the country right now, but they’ve given us a lot to talk about. This weekend will give us more.