Once again a post season flame-out..

[BobS]

I am glad they lost. I am done rooting for SEC teams. Don't care if they all lose except us.

Maybe Vandy should have had special tshirts for the game. Maybe daydream that it's UK they are playing. Isn't that the SEC way?

I actually think the SEC has a few coaches like Cal, Barnes, Johnson, Howland(retread)Kennedy and maybe Martin. The others are either overrated or done. Each year they promise how much the league will improve and clowns like Pearl lose 20, Jones has his team ready for 2-3 games and tanks the others, etc...


It's an awful basketball conference void of leadership. They play a game as a filler in time until spring football starts. That's it. I doubt that most of these places have administrators that can walk and chew gum because they are so myopic. They deserve to be looked down on and passed over. Enjoy the NIT boys.

UK will show the way, as usual. We struggle in football but we are trying. And you could learn so much from us about basketball.

[85 Fly]

....Vandy, all that SIZE and they didn't look like they wanted any parts of that game.

[Blue Heaven]

All that size and no leadership. Jones looked like he wanted to be anywhere but on the court last night. Cornett is terrible. Spends too much time on the perimeter, which I don't understand because he is as slow as molasses. Wayne Baldwin is an erratic ball hog who only plays when he wants to. Stallings is usually a decent coach but it seems he just kind of let them do their own thing last night.

[Old School]

The SEC is top heavy in basketball each year. A team or two or three that make the tournament each year are good and have some success but the rest of the league fares poorly. The SEC has pretty respectable numbers in terms of Final Four teams, wins against 1 seeds and that sort of thing. But the Final Four teams have all been Kentucky, Florida or LSU since 1996 (with the single exception of Mississippi State in 1996), and only Kentucky, Florida, LSU or Arkansas from through the start of the tournament to 1996 (with the single exception of Kentucky native Hugh Durham's Georgia squad in 1983). The conference has too many teams that can never make a deep run in the tournament. (The most recent conference expansion probably made that worse; Missouri is among the worst of all time in terms of number of tournament appearances without a Final Four appearance.)

IIRC, the SEC has a new rule in football, requiring each team to play at least one OOC game against a major conference team. The conference should probably do the same in basketball, requiring each school to play at least a couple of OOC games each year against teams meeting certain criteria: power 5 conference, made the tourney sometime in the past 4 years, RPI above a certain level at least 2 or 3 times in the past 4 or 5 years, something like that. Another alternative would be consistent or multiple SEC vs. Big XII type challenges. They have to do something about the terrible OOC scheduling, not just because it keeps teams out of the tournament and weighs down the league's collective RPI and the like, but also because some tough tests in the regular season can make a team much better, and those schools need to get used to expecting and playing better opponents instead of the terrible teams they routinely schedule now.

The SEC hasn't even gotten a team to the NIT final four since 2011. Five SEC teams have made the real Final Four in that time. The NIT is what it is, but you'd think if the quality of SEC teams not making the tournament cut was any good (the 10-8, 11-7 type SEC teams), they'd be able to cut a swath through that bracket from time to time the way that 10-8 type teams from other conferences do. I'm familiar with the argument that teams that get into the NIT are demoralized, etc. But that doesn't stop teams from the Pac 12, ACC, Big Ten or Big XII from getting into the semis and finals year after year. The last SEC team to win the NIT was Carolina in 2006. Again, the NIT is what it is, but the mid-level SEC teams don't hold their own in it against mid-level teams from other conferences that are facing the same disappointment. I think that speaks to how the #4-#8 or so SEC teams stack up year after year vs. the #5-11 or so teams from the other major conferences. It's almost the reverse of how football goes, where the #5 or #6 SEC team will more often than not beat the #2 Big Ten or #3 ACC team in any given bowl year after year.