Yes, there will legitimately be a coin flip for SEC's top seed if South Carolina and Texas win today
It may sound like something out of a mediocre sports movie but this is real life.
If South Carolina and Texas both win today then the SEC’s top seed in the upcoming SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament will be determined by a coin flip.
“If we take care of business and Texas takes care of business, our fate is in a coin toss,” Dawn Staley said earlier this week. “Yay.”
Yay, indeed.
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How we got here
The Gamecocks take on Kentucky today at 2 p.m. at Colonial Life Arena (on ESPN) while Texas completes its regular season today at home at 2 p.m. against Florida.
If both teams win, and both are heavily favored, then each will finish 15-1 in SEC play and share the conference’s regular season title.
But how about that No. 1 seed in the SEC tournament?
The conference’s first tiebreaker points to head-to-head competition between the two teams. South Carolina defeated Texas 67-50 in Columbia in mid-January before the Longhorns returned the favor in Austin with a 66-62 win over the Gamecocks.
The next tiebreaker — Win-loss record of the two teams versus the No. 1 seed (and proceeding through the No. 14 seed, if necessary) — doesn’t break it either as both teams are tied for the top seed and undefeated against all other teams.
Unlike football, which has a long list of SEC tiebreakers before it gets to a random draw, women’s basketball’s third tiebreaker is a coin flip by the commissioner.
“I would say imagine if it was football and it’s a coin flip, not for the who gets the ball first but who gets the first seeding in the national championship,” Staley said. “Imagine. Now, I’m not trying to throw the commissioner under the bus by any means. It has been a part of the tiebreakers since as long as I’ve been in the SEC, and that’s what it is. It’s unfortunate it’s coming down to that.”
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How to watch the coin flip
Not to miss out on the opportunity to draw eyeballs to what is a truly unique situation, the SEC will televise the coin flip on Sunday.
The toss, which will take place at the SEC office in Birmingham, will take place at halftime of the LSU-Ole Miss game. That game is set to tip off at 4 p.m. ET on SEC Network.
The commemorative coin will feature a Gamecock logo on one side and a Longhorn on the other. Commissioner Greg Sankey will toss the coin in the air, catch it, and then flip it onto the back of his hand — whichever school’s logo shows up will be the No. 1 seed with the other being the two-seed.
The Gamecocks, of course, have to take care of business against the Wildcats first in what will be an emotional Senior Day at CLA.
“Hopefully, we can take care of it,” Staley said. “I look forward to the coin toss at this point because that means we won. So it is what it is at this point. We going to call up to the coin guys to see if they can, and we take care of business that it flips over on the Gamecocks’ side.”
If South Carolina is the one-seed then the Gamecocks will open SEC tournament play at noon on Friday (ESPN), while the two-seed would put them with a 6 p.m. start on Friday.
