SEC March Madness: Alabama Trouble, Tennessee Pressure

Credit: Randy Sartin-Imagn Images

Screw Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. March, baby.

For the next three weeks we get to witness the greatest sports spectacle, and tournament, in the world – the NCAA Tournament. Action got underway Tuesday night, and two more play-in games will help whittle down the field to 64 by the start of Thursday’s games.

Alabama’s Title Hopes Up in Smoke?

On early Monday, Alabama’s junior guard Aden Holloway was arrested for a felony drug charge. It was later discovered that he was in possession of 2.1 lbs of marijuana, paraphernalia, and cash. Holloway told officers that he was only smoking it and not selling it, but a court of law will likely seek further evidence on whether or not that is true. He was removed from campus and will most likely meet with the university after Spring Break concludes next week. Until then, he will not play for the team.

Alabama is a No. 4 Seed in the NCAA Tournament this year, and they will open with Hofstra in Round one. Alabama is an 11.5 point favorite over Hofstra, but Holloway’s absence will likely be a huge factor against a team who has won 11 of their last 12 games by over 15 ppg. Holloway finished the season averaging 16.8 ppg and shooting 43.8 percent from 3-point range. Alabama leads the nation in scoring at 91.7 ppg, but that will be hard to match without Holloway.

Can’t spell “screwed” without SEC

The SEC certainly wasn’t as deep this season as it was last year. Last season saw five different teams that were ranked No. 1 at some point throughout the year and had two teams reach the Final Four from the conference. This year only one team, Florida, was able to earn a seed ranked higher than four. Even the SEC Tournament Champion, Arkansas, was given a No. 4 seed, and the runner-up Vanderbilt was granted a No. 5 Seed.

What was more interesting, and honestly disappointing, than the seedings was the locations of the games. The SEC got the most teams in the tournament for the second year in a row with ten, however none of the ten were placed in the East Region. Seven of the ten teams were placed in the West and Midwest Regions. Among the teams with the biggest gripe was the Tournament Champions themselves, Arkansas. The Razorbacks not only were stuck with a No. 4 Seed with a potential Sweet 16 meeting with the No. 1 Seed Arizona Wildcats, but they were also forced to go over 2,000 miles to Portland, Oregon for their opening round games.

Tennessee March Struggles

Tennessee is in the tournament for the sixth consecutive year and the eighth time in the last nine years as a program. This is the first time in quite some time where the hype hasn’t really been attached to the team heading into the dreaded month of March. Rick Barnes has been one of the best coaches in the country for the last several decades, but his Achilles heel as a head coach has been this month, and this tournament.

Tennessee has been a four seed or higher six times under Barnes. They’ve only made it past the Sweet 16, however, two times. Granted, those were both in the last two years of the tournament where they came one win shy of making the program’s first ever Final Four. This year they’re a No. 6 Seed and will open with the winner of Miami (Ohio) and SMU played on Wednesday night. The Vols’ 11 losses this season were tied for the second most in any season under Barnes over the last nine years. Still, this may be the year that Barnes finally gets Rocky Top to the Final Four.

Betting advice & Numbers to Know

There are usually two types of people filling out a bracket: the person solely going off vibes and the one putting in way too much research. Here’s the best advice I can give as an avid bracket filler outer and gambler during March Madness. I don’t want to ever call someone a degenerate gambler, so let’s go with “dedicated” instead. Here’s my advice to everyone – if you do enough research for your bracket, you will be able to talk yourself into anything, and then right back out of that same thing with even more research.

Here are two simple numbers I think are very helpful.

52.5 – A lot of people love to talk about the 12 versus 5, 13 versus 4, and 14 versus 3 upsets every year in the bracket. Did you know however, that over the last ten years No. 11 Seed teams have upset No. 6 Seeds 52.5 percent of their overall games? Now you do.

34 – Whether it’s NIL creating less parity across the sport or just a general fall off of Cinderellas thanks to the rich getting richer in the transfer portal, the double digit seed underdog has been less and less ferocious over the last few years. Double digit underdogs covered 57 percent of games during the NCAA Tournament two years ago. That number plummeted to just 34 percent in last year’s tournament. Will we see that again this year?

SEC Lock of the First Round – Georgia

There’s not a game I love more than Georgia advancing to pass St. Louis in Round One of the tournament. The Bulldogs finished third in scoring offense this season at 89.8 ppg. Their opponent finished 11th which is also good, but that’s a St. Louis team that started out 24-1 on the year and fell to .500 at just 4-4 in their last eight games. Take the Bulldogs.

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Chris Marler

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