SEC Basketball: Alabama, Tennessee and levels down the rest of SEC

Alabama Basketball and Tennessee are clearly the class of the SEC. If the 14 SEC basketball teams were ranked in tiers, Tier 1 is the Crimson Tide and the Vols. An accurate ranking would require leaving a Tier 2 blank, because, below the Tide and the Vols, no other team is close.

In a third tier, Auburn and Arkansas qualify, though the Hogs have yet to figure out how to prosper with two key starters lost to injury.

A fourth tier can include Missouri and Texas A&M. The Tigers are 13-3, but many of the wins came against the bottom third of Division One opponents.  Their big win over Kentucky is tainted by the fact the Cats are not good. The Aggies are 11-5, with five straight wins. including an 18-point home victory over Missouri. Serious blemishes for the Aggies are losses to Murray State and Wofford. Florida squeaks into Tier 4, despite a 9-7 record. The Gators have played a demanding schedule and none of the seven losses have been to a bad team. At least five of the losses are to probable NCAA Tournament teams.

The fifth tier is Kentucky, Mississippi State, LSU and Georgia. State, LSU, and Georgia have only four losses each. For that reason, their fans can optimistically call them NCAA Tournament bubble teams. There is no optimism in Lexington. It will take John Calipari’s best coaching job to make this season’s Cats respectable.

What is left, dragging the SEC bottom is Vandy, Ole Miss and South Carolina. A loss by any of the other 11 SEC teams, to either of the trio, even in Nashville, Oxford or Columbia would mar a team’s resume.

SEC Basketball Teams NCAA NET Ranking

Note: NET Rankings through games of Jan. 11

• No. 2 – Tennessee Vols
• No. 6 – Alabama Crimson Tide
• No. 20 – Arkansas Razorbacks
• No. 30 – Auburn Tigers
• No. 46 – Missouri Tigers
• No. 50 – Mississippi State Bulldogs
• No. 57 – Florida Gators
• No. 63 – Kentucky Wildcats
• No. 74 – Texas A&M Aggies
• No. 100 – Ole Miss Rebels
• No. 101 – LSU Bengal Tigers
• No. 104 – Georgia Bulldogs
• No. 107 – Vanderbilt Commodores
• No. 245 – South Carolina Gamecocks

The NCAA NET rankings are important, but other calculations and algorithms go into the eventual seeding for the NCAA Tournament. There is ESPN’s BPI, along with rankings published by Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin. The NET SOR (Strength of Record) and Kevin Pauga’s KPI are results-based metrics. Pomeroy and Sagarin, along with the BPI are predictive metrics.

Not all Alabama basketball fans track all those sources. The program has so often struggled to make an NCAA Tournament field, Alabama fans don’t have much practice drilling down on potential NCAA Tournament seeding.

We will dig deeper into the sources as the season progresses. For now, using them to compare Alabama and Tennessee is interesting.

• Tennessee Vols – NET No. 2; SOR, No. 23; KPI, No. 4; BPI, No. 2; POM (Pomeroy), No. 2; SAG (Sagarin), No. 2
• Alabama Crimson Tide – NET, No. 6; SOR, No. 2; KPI, No, 2; BPI, No. 4; POM, No. 5; SAG, No. 5

Alabama also has the NET calculated No. 1 SOS (Strength of Schedule). A reason why Tennessee is ranked above Alabama in the predictive rankings is that the two teams play only once in the regular season, and the game is in Knoxville.

Bama Hammer will update all the rankings frequently as the SEC basketball season progresses. The Crimson Tide got some help Thursday night when Gonzaga held off BYU, 75-74.