March Madness in Full Swing at SEC Tournament
By Jamie H. Vaught
Some tidbits from this week’s SEC Tournament in Nashville….
--Kentucky coach John Calipari needs three more wins in the SEC Tournament to tie former Florida coach Billy Donovan as the all-time winningest coach in tournament history (since renewal in 1979). Donovan has 27 wins. Calipari is currently third on the list with 24 wins, tying with ex-UK boss Tubby Smith. Former Alabama coach Wimp Sanderson is second with 25 victories. Former Wildcats mentor Rick Pitino follows at No. 5 with 17 wins.
--Two other current SEC coaches are on the list with double-digit SEC tourney wins. Auburn coach Bruce Pearl has 13 wins, including his stint at Tennessee. UT boss Rick Barnes has 11 victories.
--Calipari leads all coaches with most SEC tournament championships with six since the tournament was renewed in 1979. Three coaches –Sanderson, Smith and Pitino – have five titles. Donovan has four.
--It was great to see a couple of former UK assistants under Calipari find success at other schools.
Coach Preston Spradlin’s Morehead State went 26-8 this season while earning OVC Tournament title and a berth in next week’s NCAA tournament. A native of Pikeville, Ky., Spradlin came to Morehead after five seasons at Kentucky. He spent two years as a graduate assistant with the Wildcats and three years as the assistant director of operations.
Meanwhile, Coach Tony Barbee of Central Michigan was named Mid-American Conference’s Coach of the Year as his team posted an 18-13 mark going into this week’s conference tournament. He came to Central Michigan in 2021 from Kentucky where he spent seven years on Calipari’s staff. He previously served as the head coach at Auburn and UTEP.
--Former Wildcat Mark Pope, a member of UK’s 1996 national championship, is doing well at Brigham Young as the fifth-year head coach, guiding the 22-9 Cougars to a No. 20 national ranking before this week’s Big 12 Tournament. Pope is one of the four head coaches in program history to win 20 or more games in four of their first five seasons in Provo, Utah.
--After 2024, the SEC Tournament will remain in Nashville for the next six years. But the current agreement between the parties can be extended five more years to 2035.
--The conference tournament games played on Sunday are still very important for the NCAA Tournament seeding, according to NCAA Tournament Selection Committee Chairman Charles McClelland, who spoke at Wednesday’s press conference in Indianapolis.
“I would like to address the false notion that because the selection show begins at 6:00 p.m. (ET) on Sunday on CBS that games played on Sunday aren't factored into the selection, seeding and bracketing process. I can say definitively that nothing could be further from the truth,” said McClelland, who is the Southwestern Athletic Conference Commissioner. “We do not start the bracketing process before mid-morning Sunday, and we will come up with as many brackets as necessary to account for changes to the seed lists that are based on outcomes of five championship games that take place.
“By mid-afternoon, three of those games will be finished so we can start eliminating some of the brackets we've constructed, but a couple of those games conclude just before the start of the selection show, so we always must be very careful about which bracket gets submitted to our broadcast partners.
“All the conference tournament games matter, though like we've always said, they don't matter more than any other individual outcome. These games don't carry more weight than a game played last month, but they are not ignored due to timing, either.”
--Five SEC teams are ranked in this week’s Associated Press poll. Tennessee is No. 5, Kentucky No. 9, Auburn No. 12, South Carolina No. 15 and Alabama No. 19.
--Five SEC teams rank in the Top 25 of KenPom’s offensive efficiency rankings. They are No. 2 Alabama, No. 6 Kentucky, No. 13 Auburn, No. 17 Florida, and No. 25 Tennessee.
--On defense, three conference teams – Tennessee (No. 3), Auburn (No. 6), and Mississippi State (No. 25) – are ranked in the Top 25 of KenPom’s defensive efficiency ratings.
--We saw a lot of 100-point games this season, including six (non-conference and SEC games) by Kentucky. Alabama had nine overall. In league play, SEC teams reached the 100-point mark 15 times. That is more than any season in the last 25 years.
--Kentucky All-American senior Antonio Reeves is currently the third-leading scorer in the SEC with a 20,2-point average, just behind SEC Player of the Year Dalton Knecht of Tennessee (21.35 points) and All-SEC guard Mark Sears of Alabama (21.1 points). Reeves is among the league’s best free throw shooters, ranking No. 4 with 88.0 percent.
--UK senior Tre Mitchell is No. 7 on SEC rebounding list with an average of 6.88 rebounds.
--Kentucky freshman Reed Sheppard, who earlier was named SEC Freshman of the Year, leads the conference in steals with an average of 2.52 per game. He is also averaging 4.52 assists, which is good for No. 3 in SEC.
--Former Morehead State star Johni Broome of Auburn has been named an All-American by the Sporting News. He is also one of the 10 semifinalists for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Award. The 6-foot-10 junior played two years at Morehead State.
--UK has the best three-point shooting team with 41.2 percent in the nation. Ole Miss and Alabama are second and third, respectively, in the SEC.
--In scoring offense, Alabama tops the country with 90.84 points a game. Nationally, UK follows at No. 2 with 89.52 points.
--In scoring defense, South Carolina ranks No. 1 in the conference, allowing 66.39 points. Tennessee is second with 67.71 points.
--According to UK’s game notes, the SEC Network broadcasters for Friday night’s game between Kentucky and the winner of Ole Miss-Texas A&M game are Tom Hart (play by play), Dane Bradshaw (analyst) and Alyssa Lang (sideline).
--The SEC Tournament matchup between the No. 7-seed Texas A&M and No. 10-seed Ole Miss on Thursday night is a rematch of last Saturday’s regular season finale when the Aggies won 86-60 in Oxford, Miss. Both schools split regular season meetings. Mississippi defeated host Texas A&M 71-68 back in January.
--Don’t forget former coach Tubby Smith is representing Kentucky as a member of the 2024 SEC Legends class. He will be recognized at the halftime of UK’s Friday night matchup. Smith spent 10 years at Kentucky, guiding the Cats to one national championship (1998), five SEC regular season titles and five SEC Tournament championships.
--In the NCAA Net rankings, UK is ranked No. 19 going into the SEC Tournament, while the 23-8 Wildcats have moved up to No. 9 in both AP and USA Today Coaches polls.
--A quick prediction: Kentucky and Tennessee will advance to Sunday’s championship game with the Cats winning by 5 for the SEC Tournament title. However, to be honest, Alabama, Auburn, South Carolina and Florida all could win the tournament. Nevertheless, it should be a fun tourney to watch.
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of six books about UK basketball, including recently-published “Forever Crazy About The Cats: An Improbable Journey of a Kentucky Sportswriter Overcoming Adversity.” He is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine, and a professor at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro. You can follow him on Twitter @KySportsStyle or reach him via email at KySportsStyle@gmail.com.
