Bruce Pearl previews SEC success in NCAA Tournament, touches on Vanderbilt snub

The SEC sent eight teams dancing this year as over half of the Southeastern Conference will be represented in this year’s NCAA Tournament. Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl was asked if he felt the SEC was fairly represented in this years edition of March Madness, and even felt like one more team could have been in the mix.

“Yeah getting eight in is unbelievable that’s what we try to get, I mean that’s more than the upper half and Vandy was probably one of the last teams that didn’t make it and coach Stackhouse did an incredible job. They played great at the end,” Pearl said.

Vanderbilt finished the season with one more conference win than the Tigers this season, with both teams reaching 20 wins, but Vanderbilt just missed the cut. It was a rollercoaster season for the Tigers, who started the season 8-0 and finished the regular season 4-8.

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“Talk about the body of work, it’s important from start to finish,” Pearl said. “Part of going to Israel and having all those practices I think helped us play pretty well early, but it wore us out a little bit.”

The Tigers may have lost some steam towards the end of the season, but still did enough to secure a No. 9 seed in this year’s tournament. Auburn joins 67 other teams in a tournament field with some strong, favored title contenders and plenty of frisky teams capable of making a deep run.

“Clearly I think the league is extremely well-represented and I think there’s an adage about there’s no great teams,” Pearl said. “Alabama looks like a great team, Houston looks like a great team, the number one seeds. Texas, Kansas, I think the guys on the one/two line are probably all thinking that those are going to be your favorites.”

Three of the four teams mentioned by Pearl currently have the best odds of winning the national championship this year, with Auburn sitting at +11,000 odds.

“But there are some teams all over this bracket that are capable of making a run, so therefore we have a lot of teams in the SEC that can advance,” Pearl said.

It will definitely be interesting to see if any SEC teams meet each other at one point during the tournament, as the Tigers kickoff their tournament campaign against Iowa on Thursday at 6:50 p.m. ET.