Kentucky holds steady at No. 8 in SEC Tournament seeding race

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sc-326308 — Dr. Michael Huang, Kentucky Sports Radio

Mark Pope‘s team handled its business at home against South Carolina on Saturday afternoon in Rupp Arena. Kentucky made the worst SEC offense look like the worst SEC offense and had an efficient scoring attack against a top-50 defense. The Cats also saw their resume strengthen with Clemson, Florida, and Texas A&M all picking up big Quad 1A wins.

Kentucky should stay firm on the No. 4 seed line as bracket projections begin to roll out today, but the Cats also stayed firm in their SEC Tournament projection as conference play is now 55.5 percent complete.

UK would be the No. 8 seed in Nashville if the SEC Tournament started today. Computer projections are also still calling for UK to be the No. 8 seed at the end of the season.

Current standings

Alabama (9-1)
Auburn (9-1)
Florida (7-3)
Texas A&M (7-3)
Ole Miss (7-4)
Tennessee (7-4)
Missouri (6-4)
Kentucky (5-5)
Mississippi State (5-5)
Vanderbilt (5-5)
Texas (4-7)
Georgia (4-7)
Oklahoma (3-7)
Arkansas (3-7)
LSU (1-9)
South Carolina (0-10)

Alabama takes over the top spot from Auburn due a better win in the conference standings. The Tide’s best win came against Texas A&M and Auburn’s best win occurred against Ole Miss. Florida and Texas A&M were the big winners on Saturday slipping into the last double-bye spots with eight games to play.

Kentucky is in a three-way tie in the No. 8 spot but owns the tiebreaker over Mississippi State and Vanderbilt due to best overall win (Florida). The Cats are one-game back of Missouri with a head-to-head matchup still to play against the Tigers. UK is two games back of the final double-bye spot, but does own a tiebreaker over both Florida and Texas A&M. That could matter if UK does some climbing in the standings over the next few weeks.

Projected SEC standings

Using KenPom‘s projections, this is what the SEC Tournament field would look like. I used some projected results to find tiebreaker winners. There are seven teams projected to reach double-digit wins. Five of those are projected to win at least 12 games.

That means Kentucky would need to go 7-1 over the final eight games of conference play to have a shot at the double-bye. Getting there seems unrealistic when you consider the Cats are a projected underdog in six remaining games.

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Getting to the No. 5 or No. 6 seed line feels like the ceiling as of now. Kentucky is currently chasing Missouri and Ole Miss.

Auburn (15-3)
Alabama (13-5)
Florida (13-5)
Tennessee (12-6)
Texas A&M (12-6)
Missouri (11-7)
Ole Miss (10-8)
Kentucky (9-9)
Mississippi State (9-9)
Texas (8-10)
Vanderbilt (7-11)
Arkansas (7-11)
Georgia (7-11)
Oklahoma (6-12)
LSU (3-15)
South Carolina (2-16)

Kentucky owns the head-to-head tiebreaker over Mississippi State and that is expected to matter, but Ole Miss owning the head-to-head tiebreaker over Kentucky looms large. So does the season finale in Columbia against Missouri.

The Wildcats have four remaining games against teams projected to finish below them in the standings — Texas (Feb. 15), Vanderbilt (Feb. 19), Oklahoma (Feb. 26), and LSU (March 4). Any significant climb up the ladder likely includes sweeping these games with the Texas and Oklahoma contests occurring on the road.

UK is currently only projected to finish two games back of Missouri in the No. 5 spot with the head-to-head tiebreaker still to be determined. There is a lot of ball left, but all current signs point to UK beginning this SEC Tournament on Thursday.