It was a big night for SEC Basketball, including Missouri finding a way to come back to beat Arkansas, along with a beatdown win for Auburn.
SEC Basketball has been a wild ride this season and giving myself the task of ranking these teams week after week has already been a ton of fun. However, I find myself with more thoughts about these teams and these games on a nightly basis that I don’t get to squeeze into power rankings each week. From bad officiating to weird stats to incredible individual performances, there is a ton of fun to be had on any given night.
Around here, it just means more which means that I will do more to catch you up on the fun that is basketball in the SEC. With that being said, it’s time to unveil the SEC Roundball Roundup. Each night of SEC play, I’ll award my player of the night, team of the night, the big woof of the night (should be a fun one) and the stat of the night. I’m excited to provide more SEC hoops commentary and to continue to narrate the rest of the season!
Player of the night- DeAndre Gholston, Missouri (16 points and three assists off the bench)
Missouri picked up a massive win over Arkansas last night and while All-SEC bound forward Kobe Brown led the team with 17 points, it was Gholston who caught my attention the most during their late comeback win.
The Hogs had Mizzou down ten with just a little over five minutes left to play. That lead was completely gone in two and a half minutes. During that 10-0 run, Gholston scored five of those points including the three-pointer to tie things up at 67 with two and a half minutes left.
Later on in crunch time, with Arkansas leading by two with 1:02 remaining, Gholston knocked down a fadeaway jumper to tie things up.
He was an instrumental part of bringing them back in this game with his scoring and his passing as well. His three assists led the team and made up almost half of Missouri’s dime total.
I don’t want to understate Brown’s performance because he’s adding on to what is a no-brainer case to be on the All-SEC team but in a game against a good Arkansas defense, they needed another scoring presence and Gholston stepped up.
My honorable mention for last night was Colin Castleton from Florida. They were atrocious offensively (more on that later) but Castleton brought them back from a disastrous offensive half to the verge of pulling off a great road win. A statline of 14 points, 13 rebounds, and six blocks usually gets you a player of the night honor but Gholston’s efforts in a winning performance is enough to give him the nod.
Team of the night: Auburn (67-49 road win at LSU)
In the match-up of the Tigers, Auburn came in and dominated from start to finish. Winning on the road can be tricky for every team in this league and this is the kind of game where upsets definitely happen. But not for Bruce Pearl and his team.
I definitely favor road wins in conference play, especially when they’re not even competitive. Auburn can’t suffer many bad losses for their postseason resume and a loss to LSU would’ve really bruised it considering their big win against Arkansas looks less sexy with each loss the Hogs experience.
A good sign of optimism for Auburn fans in this game should be their scoring balance. Scoring balance isn’t necessarily a “must have” to be a team that contends in March but when you have streaky shooting guards, you need secondary scorers who can counteract some of those games where one player isn’t taking over. Against LSU, Wendell Green and Jaylin Williams scored 14 and three other players (Lior Berman, Allen Flanigan, and KD Johnson) scored eight points. They had eight players in total score more than two buckets from the field.
Defensively, Auburn did what Auburn does and created chaos. They held LSU to 0.74 points per possession and a brutal 34% on two-point shots and between Jaylin Williams, Johni Broome, and Dylan Cardwell, blocked seven shots. Auburn has tenacious guards who defend the ball well and a group of bigs that they can funnel into to protect the paint.
The honorable mention team here is Texas A&M for holding on to beat Florida for the second time this year and secure a 5-0 start in conference play. Only they and Alabama have yet to take a conference L this season.
WOOF: Florida’s first-half performance
Florida went to the halftime breakdown 23-12. You read that correctly, 12 points. Texas A&M defends well and deserve a ton of credit for making Colin Castelton’s life harder and forcing Florida’s guards to beat them (a strategy we can probably foresee other teams employing on them). But man, I can’t let a 2-26 (7%!!) shooting performance from the field slide.
Of those 26 shots, 11 were threes. Only one was made. 15 of those shots were two’s. Only one was made. 1-15 from two-point range is as bad a performance in half as you’ll ever witness.
The Gators committed fewer than ten turnovers and STILL finished below 0.85 points per possession. That’s how poor the shooting was. The looks weren’t all great, but damn was there a lid on the rim for them in that first half.
Sure, Florida battled back and almost squeaked out a huge conference road win. But they didn’t. And they didn’t because that horror show of a first half was just too much to overcome.
An honorable mention for last night’s WOOF award was the officiating in Arkansas-Missouri. I’m the last person to criticize officiating. I hate it and the sound of ref complaints is like nails on a chalkboard to me (at some point we just need to accept that even the best officiating crews will impact a game).
But last night was pretty questionable. The foul on Makhi Mitchell to send Gholston to the line after his fadeaway jumper was brutal considering there was no contact made between Mitchell and Gholston after he started shooting. One missed call isn’t unforgivable, but not allowing ANY contact and fouling out four players on one team with a combined 66 free throw attempts between both teams does a serious disservice to the aesthetic of the game.
Stat of the night: Texas A&M’s red-hot SEC start
With the win over Florida, the Aggies moved to 5-0 in SEC play. This is only the second time since they joined the conference that they started conference play by winning their first five games. The last time this happened was in 2016 when they were led by future NBA players Alex Caruso and Danuel House to the Sweet 16. That 2015-2016 team went 7-0 to start conference play. Up next, the Aggies have tough tests against Kentucky and Auburn on the road. Wins in those two games will give this group the distinction of having the best start to SEC play in program history.
An honorable (or in this case, dishonorable) mention for stat of the night goes to LSU. The Tigers 34% shooting performance from INSIDE the arc was brutal. This moves their overall percentage total to 38.8% from two on the year in league play. This season, there are 14 teams across D1 that are shooting better from three-point range this season than LSU is from two-point range in SEC play. There’s still lots of room to grow offensively in Baton Rouge.