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Something Has To Give In Athens
Some interesting notes and more notes about college basketball in the Southeastern Conference.
Did you know that only two SEC teams are unbeaten at home this season in league play? Yep, Kentucky and Georgia. The Wildcats have won all seven of their SEC home battles while the Bulldogs are undefeated in seven contests.
Three schools have lost only one game. They are Alabama, Auburn, and Florida. Kentucky is responsible for the only home court SEC win in Tuscaloosa and Gainesville. LSU upset Auburn on the road. Tennessee and LSU have lost twice each at home. Florida and Vander-bilt have beaten the Vols in Knoxville while UK and Alabama have whipped LSU in Baton Rouge.
Eddie Sutton's Wildcats will get a shot at eliminating Georgia from the field of "unbeaten at home" this Saturday in a nationally televised game via NBC-TV in Athens.
While Kentucky and Georgia have been most impressive at home, only Kentucky and Alabama (4-3) have played better than .500 on the road. The Cats have been awesome, to say the least, with a remarkable 6-1 road mark and the 'Bama is 4-3.
On the other hand, most SEC schools just can't find that winning combination away from home. Tennessee hasn't won a road SEC regular season contest since January of last year when the Vols upset Georgia in double overtime in Athens. The Vols are 0-11 since that time.
Ole Miss is in the same category with a current 0-6 mark on the road. Even worse is Mississippi State which is winless in seven SEC outings on the road. Vanderbilt won its first road trip to Ole Miss, then lost the next four, but bounced back last Saturday to upset Tennessee in Knoxville.
What does all this mean? That Kentucky's 6-1 SEC road record is enough evidence to hand the league trophy over to the Wildcats without even looking at the home mark.
Kentucky's 36th Southeastern Conference title should be assured on Wednesday night when the Cats host the Florida Gators at Rupp Arena.
A win over Florida would give the Cats a 14-1 league mark and guarantee UK no worse than a first place tie. Going into the Florida game. UK held a three-game league over second place Alabama with four games remaining.
Should UK defeat Florida and should Alabama lose at Tennessee, the Cats would own the title outright. It would also be the earliest the title race has been decided since LSU won the SEC with a 17-1 mark back in 1981. That season, LSU went to the Final Four in Philadelphia.
Statistics don't always tell the complete truth, but rarley do they tell complete lies either.
For instance, the SEC season stats give one a good reason why the league race came down to a two-way fight between Kentucky and Alabama.
Kentucky leads the SEC in scoring defense (limiting the opposition to only 59.6 ppg), opponents' rebounds (allowing opposition to only 28.6 rpg), rebounding margin (a 4.7 rpg) and scoring margin ( 14.5 points per game).
That's not all. Kentucky is second in defens-ing against the field goal (opponents hit only 46.3 percent against UK), second in field goal differential (3.9 percent), second in steals (8.4
spg) and second in turnover margin (4.2 per contest).
Stats show the Wildcats' most glaring weaknesses in blocked shots, free throw accuracy, rebounding and field goal accuracy. Usually, those last three categories can be mighty costly to a club.
Kentucky is sixth in the league in field goal percentage, but still hitting at a 50.2 clip which isn't as bad as the league's No. 6 spot would indicate. Kentucky's 72.1 clip from the charity line isn't terrible, but one would expect better shooting from a 22-3 club.
Rebounding at a 33.3 clip could be expected for a team which doesn't boast a huge front line. The Cats' plus here, though, is the fact that Kentucky permits its opponents only 28.6 rebounds per game which still has UK No. 1 in the rebounding margin department.
Although everyone except Kentucky and Alabama are officially out of the regular season SEC race, don't expect any of the clubs (except perhaps Mississippi State which practically has a lock on tenth place) to roll over and play dead.
Why?
Because the tournament seeding will be more important than ever next month.
By mid-February, one can usually begin to sort out which teams are targeted for the extra preliminary round to qualify for the final eight in the SEC Tournament.
As mentioned earlier. State is assured of one of the four sports on opening night. Only Kentucky and Alabama are cinches not to play on Wednesday night. Auburn appears to be a safe bet to escape the extra game. After that, everyone is fighting to avoid the bottom four.
Two games over the weekend really brought the rest of the pack together. Ole Miss' shocking 58-57 upset of LSU and Vanderbilt's equalling shocking 66-62 upset over Tennessee in Knoxville were the key disaster areas for two schools who expected better results in the preseason.
Tennessee expected to finish somewhere in the upper division but finds itself mired in eighth place, only one game ahead of Ole Miss.
Meanwhile, LSU was considered a legitimate Final Four contender but one disaster after another has hit the Baton Rouge campus this season. The Tigers appeared to regroup about ten days ago, but Alabama surprised the Tigers in the Deaf Dome a week ago Sunday. A few days later, LSU rallied back and destroyed Tennessee 75-50.
Everything was back to normal, until Dale Brown's troops headed to Oxford where Lee Hunt again proved he's one of the most underrated coaches around. Ole Miss fashioned a one-point win and LSU is just one game ahead of seventh place Vanderbilt.
Right now, the best bets for the first round action appear to be State, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
Next to the SEC Tournament, the hottest topic is how many SEC teams will be invited to the NCAA Tournament next month. It says here that the SEC may get its fewest invitations since 1982 and there's an outside chance the league might get only two.
Five SEC teams were invited last March and
the league was supposed to be a more improved conference this season. Four teams went in both 1983 and 1984. Only three (Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky) were invited in 1982.
No question the league is down this season, from top to bottom and in between. Quite frankly, LSU, Auburn and Tennessee have been major disappointments. Florida and Georgia have played about as expected although both of these clubs hurt themselves with less than impressive non-conference play.
Only Kentucky and Alabama have surpassed preseason predictions. By the time the SEC tournament arrives, eight of the ten clubs will most likely have ten or more losses. Teams with double-digit losses have a way of being ignored by the selection committee unless you have (a) twenty or more wins and/or (b) played a rugged non-conference schedule.
Kentucky is a lock for NCAA play. Alabama is close to a lock because it has been UK's stif-fest challenge to the league crown and trie SEC will always get at least two bids. Bama's two most recent losses have dampened the pollsters' interest though and the Tide's only tough non-conference foe was UTEP which defeated Alabama 74-62.
Auburn has all the horses, but they haven't always showed up for a fall day's work. The non-league card was improved this season for the Tigers, but not by as much as first thought. Auburn was upset early by the likes of West Virginia, Western Kentucky, UAB and Southwest Louisiana. If the Tigers should drop three of their last four, a trip to the NCAA would probably hinge on their play in the SEC tourney.
One big plus for Auburn would be All-American Chuck Person. All things equal, the NCAA would not want Person to be showcased in the National Invitational Tournament when the Tiger senior will probably be one of the top five NBA draftees this spring. On the second thought. Auburn will get an NCAA bid, no matter what.
Florida could find itself in another down-to-the-wire duel with another team for the SEC's fourth invitation. LSU and Georgia will likely fight it out with Florida for an entry. The Tigers played a bunch of patsies early (aka Montana State. BYU-Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific, Hawaii-Loa, among Hawaii-Hilo among others), but you have to give Dale Brown credit for taking on Lamar, Texas, Washington and Georgtown.
And John Williams is a billboard hit. LSU should go into the SEC tourney with at least 20 wins, but should the Tigers get upset by either Vanderbilt or Auburn, the pressure could be on for LSU to go a long way in the SEC tourney.
Fact.
LSU has not won a post season tournament game (either SEC or NCAA or NIT) since 1981 when the Tigers lost both their games in the Final Four at Philadelphia. That's a ten-game losing streak after the regular season.
Of course, all this can go down the drain if the league tournament holds to tradition.
In case you've forgotten, the SEC has staged seven post season tournaments since the renewal back in 1979 and there have been seven different champions.
Only Florida, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State haven't won the event since 1979.
Speaking of the SEC tournament, there's growing suspicion that the University of Ten-
nessee won't be able to host next March's event at its new 25,000-seat arena.
If that be the case, the SEC tournament site selection committee will have to decide whether to hold it at Birmingham, Nashville. Lexington or perhaps Adanta or Baton Rouge. Our sources indicate the tourney might return to Nashville because the Vandy people did such a great job with it in 1984.
UT officials are still having problems with their new facility. Work was stopped several months ago because of massive sink holes at the construction site and the university is now in the process of trying to get the project started up again.
No official word has been handed down, but insiders say there is no way the facility will be completed in time for the 1987 tourney. The arena was supposed to have been ready for near month's tourney.
Plenty of tickets remain available for the 1986 SEC Tournament at Rupp Arena according to UK officials. Ticket books are S60 each and are good for one admission to all five sessions.
Tickets are on sale at the UK Basketball Ticket Office, Memorial Coliseum, Lexington. Kentucky. If you order by mail, you should include a handling and postage fee of $2.
Tickets can also be purchased in person at the UK ticket office.
UK athletics director Cliff Hagan is hoping that Wildcat fans will turn out in record numbers for the tourney because it could have an impact on UK's ability to attract the tourney back to Lexington in the future.
Obviously, most coaches are against the tourney being played on UK's home court, but 22.000 tickets at S60 each can be a mighty powerful ally when comparing that with 15.000 in Nashville and even less in Birmingham.
Some 19,000 tournament books were sold for the 1982 tourney in Lexington, but sales are lagging this time around. UK assistant athletics director Larry Ivy said there was a brisk increase last Friday, the morning after UK upset Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Should UK sell out the tourney, it would set an all-time attendance record for a conference post season tournament and also put the SEC in a position of having to consider Rupp Arena almost every other year or so.
Not only will UK have to generate more sales than three years ago, Wildcat fans will have to make up for lagging sales at other schools.
Most disappointing were ticket sales at a number of SEC schools, including Vanderbilt where the Commodores did not take their entire allottment. Usually, Vandy requests additional tickets.
With many of the teams absorbing lacklustre campaigns, about the only real interest just happens to be in Kentucky and around the Crimson Tide campus.
Kentucky football coach Jerry Claiborne got his biggest recruit of all on national letter-of-intent signing dayAll-American Al Baker last Wednesday, but the Wildcat staff obviously felt some major disappointments on the way to an average recruiting season.
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