Alabama Basketball: SEC Standings and way more important stuff
By Ronald Evans
In a normal February, Alabama Basketball being 12-0 in SEC play would be huge. This season the undefeated record is exciting and still important, but with each game, it becomes clear Alabama is headed toward more than an SEC Regular Season Championship.
There is work left to do in the six remaining SEC games. The full standings are provided below, but in summary, Alabama has a two-game lead over Texas A&M and a four-game lead over Tennessee. The magic number for an Alabama Basketball Regular Season Championship is five. Five wins do it, but losses by Texas A&M would also lower the needed-wins number.
The SEC’s three, five-loss teams, Auburn, Kentucky and Missouri are not going to catch the Crimson Tide. The other eight SEC teams are much too far behind to catch up. Five of them are already mathematically eliminated from a Regular Season Championship.
What matters most for Alabama Basketball is NCAA Tournament seeding. The Crimson Tide is not more than five wins away from locking down a 1-seed. Get those five in the regular season and an opening loss in the SEC Tournament would not matter.
The algorithm from Team Rankings predicts the Crimson Tide will be the overall top seed in the NCAA Tournament. Their in-depth calculation gives Alabama a 36% chance to make the Final Four. Only Houston is projected higher at 38%.
More and more people who know much about college basketball are talking about the Crimson Tide as the nation’s best team. After Auburn’s loss to the Tide on Saturday, Bruce Pearl said,
"Our team is playing good basketball right now. We’re playing well. We’re just not playing well enough to beat the best team in the country."
Gary Parrish of CBS reinforced Pearl’s opinion by stating Alabama is “obviously good enough” to make a Final Four and win a National Championship. Parrish elaborated by saying,
"The Crimson Tide have a great coach with modern principles in Oats, a future top-five NBA Draft pick in Brandon Miller and enough talented pieces around him that a guy who was the Most Outstanding Player of the 2021 SEC Tournament (Jahvon Quinerly) is now just their sixth-leading scorer.…nobody is better equipped — based on a combination of personnel and style of play… They might not win every game going forward, but it should surprise nobody if Alabama wins the very last one that’s played this season."
Alabama Basketball Blessing and Burden
For a team that requires so much from its true freshmen players, such praise is both a blessing and a burden. Will the Crimson Tide need another wake-up call between now and the Big Dance? In the six games left in the regular season, beginning with Tennessee, Wednesday night in Knoxville, there are certainly four games Alabama could lose.
In the fickle game of basketball, no wins are guaranteed. Not even for a squad rapidly being described as college basketball’s best team.
Current SEC Standings – through games of Feb. 11
- Alabama; 12-0 and 22-3 overall
- Texas A&M; 10-2; 18-7
- Tennessee; 8-4; 19-6
- Missouri; 7-5; 19-6
- Auburn; 7-5; 17-8
- Kentucky; 7-5; 16-9
- Arkansas; 6-6; 17-8
- Vanderbilt; 6-6; 13-12
- Florida; 6-6; 13-12
- Mississippi State; 5-7; 17-8
- Georgia; 5-7; 15-10
- LSU; 2-10; 12-13
- Ole Miss; 2-10; 10-15
- South Carolina; 2-10; 9-16
Next. Freshmen stepped up in Auburn. dark
Don’t be surprised if updated Bracketology on Monday has Kentucky and Arkansas slated for play-in games, or even outside the NCAA Tournament Bubble.