SEC Basketball: Saturday is a big opportunity for SEC in NCAA Tournament
In golf, Saturday is moving day and after the first full day of action in the NCAA Tournament, Saturday will be moving day for SEC Basketball. Of the eight teams that qualified for the tournament, six played on Saturday and five won. No. 1 seed Alabama coasted to a 21-point win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, but it’s the other four winners that have a chance to make a real statement for the conference on Saturday.
The No. 4 seeded Tennessee Volunteers dispatched a pesky Louisiana team 58-55 in the East region and now get a meeting with one of the hottest teams in the country, the Duke Blue Devils. Duke has now won 10 in a row after handling No. 12 Oral Roberts from start to finish in their first game. The Volunteers are also trying to get the March monkey off the back of its coach Rick Barnes who has made just one Sweet Sixteen since making the Elite Eight in 2007-08.
In his first season at Missouri, Dennis Gates has taken a team that won just 12 games last season and was picked to finish 11th on the conference to the brink of a Sweet Sixteen appearance. They get things done with a high-octane offense that scores 79 points per game and defensively forces its opponents into 17 turnovers per game.
That was on display in their first-round win over Utah State that saw them with four players in double figures and they forced 15 Aggies’ turnovers. The Tigers don’t play a ton of defense and struggle to rebound the ball, but they have outgunned teams to the tune of 25 wins. On Saturday in order to reach the Sweet Sixteen they have to go through another Tigers squad, the ones from Princeton who pulled off the upset of the tournament and beat No. 2 Arizona as a No. 15 seed.
The Auburn Tigers haven’t exactly been playing their best basketball over the last month and a half. Since defeating South Carolina on Jan. 21 Auburn has gone just 5-9 which includes their 83-75 win over No. 9 Iowa on Thursday. They had six players score in double figures and were led by Johni Broome and Allen Flanigan who both registered double-doubles. As a reward, they get a game with No. 1 and 2nd overall seed Houston Cougars who got all they could handle from No. 16 Northern Kentucky in a 63-52 win and clearly still have a hampered star in Marcus Sasser who is dealing with a groin injury.
Fewer teams have more talent on paper than the Arkansas Razorbacks but injuries and inconsistency have plagued the team all year long. But, in their first-round win over Illinois, that talent was on display with Davonte Davis, Ricky Council IV, and Anthony Black combining for 46 points and 22 rebounds. The win gives them a huge opportunity to take on defending champion Kansas in Des Moines. The Hogs have been looking for that marquee win all year that puts the college basketball landscape on notice that things are coming together. That could come on Saturday.
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Outside of Alabama, the SEC has been inconsistent, to say the least, this season, but Saturday can change all of that. Four teams have four chances to show that they are more than just the top-seeded Crimson Tide. It’s time to see what the rest of the SEC is made of, the time has come for them to make a move.