The SEC Is Being Led By... Vanderbilt?

#23 Vanderbilt 83, #14 Tennessee 76
Kentucky is the team currently ranked #1 in the nation. Tennessee is the team that knocked off #1 ranked Kansas a couple of weeks ago. Yet first place in the SEC is currently held by Vanderbilt, after this very impressive road victory. This is a particularly surprising result when you keep in mind how much better Vanderbilt is at home than on the road. Over the previous two seasons they have been a combined 14-2 at home and 4-12 on the road. A.J. Ogilvy is the best known player on Vandy, and he has had a good year, but Jermaine Beal was the star here with 25 points on only 12 shots from the field and, most impressively, zero turnovers in 38 minutes despite fielding a large piece of the ball handling duties. Next for Vandy it's a road game at Kentucky, which they'll probably lose (Kentucky coming off their first loss of the season, Vandy coming off their biggest win of the season, you have to expect Kentucky to win easily). The question is what happens next, and whether Vanderbilt will make a serious run at being the second best team in this conference. The SEC is much better than it was last season, and being in second place in the SEC pecking order will mean a pretty good Tournament seed. For Tennessee, we're starting to learn more about how good or bad this team really is. That magical run they had after those suspensions was just that: a temporary hot streak which inevitably was going to run into reality. Teams don't get better by kicking their best player out of the program. That said, while this result will have a huge impact on the SEC East standings, I do still think that Tennessee is the better team, and that they remain the second best team in the conference. Their next game is a home game against Florida on Sunday afternoon.

Oklahoma State 76, Texas A&M 69
Oklahoma State's hot shooting (58% from the field, 67% behind the arc) was enough to overcome another game without Ray Penn, and they have quietly moved into a tie with Kansas State for third place in the Big 12. This was actually a mildly unimpressive display by them, as Texas A&M was more efficient rebounding and turned the ball over six less times. If Oklahoma State's outside shooters weren't unconscious they would have lost (and it's not like they're used to this, as even after this game they're only shooting 34.1% behind the arc as a team, which is good for 167th in the nation). But things are going to get very tough very soon for this team, which has an insanely tough final stretch to their regular season. In fact, the only game I'd label as "not too difficult" the remainder of the way is their season finale, at home against Nebraska. Their schedule and resume are good enough that a 4-6 finish to the season will more likely than not be enough for an at-large bid, but that won't be easy. As for Texas A&M, they enter the key stretch of the season. The Derrick Roland injury is far enough in the rear view mirror that things are getting back to normal, and he has supposedly done a great job at providing advice and leadership from the bench and on the practice court, but there's only so much that he can do without playing. And at 3-3 in the Big 12 they now enter a series of games that all be tough, but none will be unwinnable. In three weeks they could be 6-5 and within reach of locking up an at-large bid in February, or they could be 4-7 and desperately trying to get back on the bubble.

Memphis 75, Marshall 72
There are five bubble teams in Conference USA, and it feels like they're each at this point in the season. The key to the conference gaining multiple bids will be two or three teams pulling away from the pack, and a situation where the teams all beat up on each other and fail to differentiate themselves could still lead it to become a one-bid conference yet again. Memphis is probably the best team in the conference, certainly in terms of pure natural talent. Both Sagarin and Pomeroy agree that they've played the best of any of the C-USA teams, although not by much. But as good of a team as they've been, they're inexperienced, they're thin, and they have a very young coach who was hired for his recruiting abilities - not his in-game coaching acumen. They have just been unable to win a close game against a good team, until now. In fact, this is by far their best win of the season. They had two other RPI Top 100 victories, and they came at home against IUPUI and Oakland (yes, both teams are in the Top 100. And no, neither is a particularly impressive win for an at-large resume). Memphis has two more chances for nice wins next week when UAB and Gonzaga come to town, and the following week they get a chance to prove that they can win tough games on the road when they head to Tulsa. As for Marshall, they seem to have been particularly deflated by that close loss to West Virginia, a team that they really should have beaten. They've followed it up with consecutive home losses, to UAB and Memphis. And things don't get any easier, with road games at Houston and Tulsa coming up this week. They are 4-2 in the conference and 15-5 overall, but they're 0-5 against the RPI Top 100 and the computer numbers are really starting to sag. They need to snap out of this slump quickly or any at-large chances they had will be gone.