SEC teams have been virtually unstoppable this season, but we’re weeks away from the NCAA Tournament, where great seasons get cruelly snuffed out.
The SEC has an astounding 10 teams in the latest AP Top 25, with Auburn at No. 1. It has four of the top eight teams. Yet ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said this week that SEC teams could face a couple of potential obstacles in their quest for a national title.
In an appearance Monday on the McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning show, Bilas said the SEC Tournament will pose a stiff challenge.
“Winning the SEC Tournament is going to be harder than winning the national championship, because you’re doing it day after day after day and all of that stuff, and playing better teams throughout the course of it than you would play in the course of the NCAA Tournament,” Bilas said (via On3Sports.com).
Bilas said that brutal tournament could drain teams.
“The one concern I’d have in the SEC, there’s two things — if you win the SEC Tournament, how much gas are you going to have left in the tank after that?” Bilas said.
The ESPN analyst also pointed out the different style of officiating in the SEC.
“The other thing is the SEC has been officiated as football this year. Some of those games are football games. … And that’s not going to be the same whistle they get in the NCAA Tournament,” Bilas said. “But I tend to think that the gauntlet they’re going through is going to make them tougher than some of the other conferences are going to be when they get to the tournament.”
Whatever happens in the final weeks of the regular season and the postseason, Bilas said the SEC is already having an historic year.
“There’s never been a conference like this,” Bilas said. “So the SEC has put up numbers, both nonconference and up to now, that haven’t been matched in close to 40 years. And the last time any conference put up numbers like this, as far as success against the rest of the country, was when I was playing in the ACC in 1984. You know, Michael Jordan was at North Carolina, Len Bias was at Maryland, and that was the dominant conference.
“But the difference is that the ACC was eight teams. The SEC’s doing this with 16. … It’s hard to have 16 teams this good. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
About Arthur Weinstein
Arthur spends his free time traveling around the U.S. to sporting events, state and national parks, and in search of great restaurants off the beaten path.