All across college hoops, there are intriguing conference races going on. The Big 12, one of the nation’s deepest conferences from top to bottom, could realistically be won by eight different schools, and a power struggle exists in conferences like the ACC, Pac-12, Big East and the Big Ten.
Then there’s the SEC, where one lucky squad will be crowned, "The best team not named Kentucky."
It’s the Wildcats’ world — we’re just living in it.
Kentucky is normally the favorite to win the conference most seasons, but the Wildcats were all but handed the regular season conference championship when head coach John Calipari managed to once again reel in one of the nation’s most impressive recruiting classes, while convincing stars like the Harrison twins from last year’s Final Four team to return for another year.
That, added in with the fact that Billy Donovan’s Gators don’t appear to be as threatening as they have in past seasons, have the Wildcats poised to cruise through conference play without many problems. Yes, Kentucky is prone to an upset or two, but Calipari’s team is still leaps and bounds ahead of its intra-league competition.
With that said, if Kentucky is king, who’s the best of the rest?
At this point, it’s unclear.
As much separation as Kentucky has from everyone else in the league, the rest of the SEC is one unpredictable, jumbled mess. As of Jan. 22, second place and 10th place were separated by just two games. Through the first three weeks of conference play, teams that were expected to be among the SEC’s best, such as Florida and Arkansas, have struggled, while teams like Tennessee and Georgia have been pleasant surprises.
You could make an argument for several different teams to be the league’s best excluding Kentucky, but there’s always a counterargument.
You see, there’s a little unwritten rule that every SEC team has seemingly obliged to: for every impressive win you earn, you must lose an equally disappointing game, as well.
For example, a talented but youthful LSU team has picked up respectable road victories over Ole Miss and Florida, but the Tigers have also dropped contests against Missouri and Texas A&M, two of the conference’s lesser skilled teams.
Likewise, Tennessee has an uncharacteristically bad 18-point loss to eighth-place Alabama as its lone blemish in conference play.
That shows how nearly impossible it is to predict what will happen night in and night out in the SEC because the talent gap between its upper-tier teams and its bottom cellars is so minimal.
Essentially, there are several SEC teams that are in the middle of the pack, but no one can quite pull away because of a problem that plagues several of the league’s teams: inconsistency.
Just when one team looks ready to jump ahead of its competition, an unexpected loss pulls them back.
Meanwhile, few folks thought that South Carolina would start off league play 1-4 after upsetting then-No. 9 Iowa State in its final non-conference game, and yet, the Gamecocks enter Saturday’s matchup with No. 1 Kentucky having played arguably its worst game of the year earlier in the week against Tennessee.
Still, hope remains for teams like South Carolina. There’s still a ton of basketball left to be played, and regardless of how weak or strong the SEC is compared to other conferences, the league has proven that even the underdog can come out on top any given night.
Of course, even Goliath slipped up once, and if South Carolina could do its best David impersonation Saturday afternoon, the Gamecocks could be right back in the race.