Are you ready for some….basketball?
While you and I were obsessing over Gunner Stockton’s preparation and Mike Bobo’s playcalling and the relative dangers posed by the Georgia Tech punt return team, Mike White and his Hoop Hounds were putting together a solid non-conference resume. The Bulldogs enter SEC play today at 12-1, the lone loss being an 80-69 decision to #8 Marquette in the Bahamas. The Dawgs are among teams receiving votes in the AP basketball poll, as the writers appear to be in wait and see mode about a UGA squad that has often shown promise in the early going before falling flat in conference play.
If the Red and Black want to make an impression today would be a great opportunity. They travel to Oxford to take on #24 Ole Miss in the first game of what promises to be a brutal SEC schedule. While the league may or may not be down a bit in football this year, in basketball the SEC is inarguably college sports’ premier conference. Currently Tennessee sits at #1 in the AP poll, Auburn is #2, Alabama #5, Florida #6, and Kentucky #10. In all ten of the SEC’s sixteen teams are currently ranked in the top 25. And again, I swear I’m looking at the basketball poll not the football one.
If you’d told me a decade ago that half the AP basketball top ten would one day be composed of teams from the SEC I’d have told you that whatever substance you’d taken was one you needed to stay away from. Because that’s the kind of waking hallucination that can’t be good for you. Yet here we are.
Frankly, the Bulldogs could finish 8-10 in conference play and still have a compelling case for an NCAA tournament bid. Because finishing 8-10 with this schedule would mean surviving a gauntlet. Today is the first of five straight games against top 15 opponents including Kentucky at home next Tuesday and a date with #1 Tennessee in Knoxville a week from Wednesday.
In short, today’s conference opener against the Rebel Black Bears is actually sort of an important game, because it’s among the SEC contests that will sort out which of the SEC teams is in line for the league’s 9th, 10th, or 11th NCAA Tournament spots, a thing which I can’t believe I’m actually typing.
Tipoff is at noon with television coverage on the SEC Network.
Go ‘Dawgs!!!