Kentucky’s path to SEC title, latest odds, and more to know before the tournament begins

The Kentucky Wildcats closed the college basketball regular season on a high note, finding their way amid injuries and winning 11 of their final 14 games in Southeastern Conference play, capping the campaign with an 88-79 victory at Arkansas over the weekend.

Their quest for a deep run in the NCAA Tournament begins next week. First, the Cats will travel to Nashville for the SEC Tournament and a final chance to make an impression on the NCAA selection committee.

UK’s postseason begins around 9:30 p.m. Friday on SEC Network. Here’s what you need to know about the SEC Tournament before then.

Kentucky’s path

The Wildcats won’t know their opponent for Friday’s quarterfinals until late Thursday night.

That 9:30ish p.m. game Thursday will pit 6-seeded Vanderbilt against the winner of Wednesday night’s Georgia-Louisiana State game.

Kentucky split two games with Vandy in the regular season, including a Senior Night loss to the Commodores — the game in which Cason Wallace was injured. UK also split two games with Georgia and beat LSU in its only matchup with the Tigers (74-71 in Rupp Arena on Jan. 3).

If Kentucky advances past the quarterfinals, the Cats will play either 2-seeded Texas A&M, 7-seeded Auburn or 10-seeded Arkansas.

UK spent the past two weekends logging convincing wins over Arkansas (88-79 in Fayetteville on Saturday) and Auburn (86-54 in Rupp the previous Saturday) and defeated Texas A&M (76-67 on Jan. 21 in Lexington). Of course, UK also lost to Arkansas 88-73 in Rupp Arena on Feb. 7, one of the low points of the Wildcats’ season.

Top-seeded Alabama — a threat to land the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament — would be the most likely potential matchup for Kentucky in the SEC title game, though the Crimson Tide program has been engulfed in off-the-court controversy and (probably not coincidentally) hasn’t been playing its best basketball over the past few weeks.

Bama won 11 of its first 14 SEC games by double digits (seven by 20-plus points). The Tide’s last four games: 78-76 win at South Carolina, 86-83 win over Arkansas, 90-85 win over Auburn, and a 67-61 loss at Texas A&M. (And two of those three wins came in overtime.)

If Alabama gets upset on its side of the bracket, 4-seeded Missouri and 5-seeded Tennessee would be the most likely culprits. That side also includes 8-seeded Florida, 9-seeded Mississippi State, 12-seeded South Carolina and 13-seeded Mississippi.

Kentucky had a 6-3 regular-season record against both sides of the SEC Tournament bracket. The only three SEC teams that UK hasn’t defeated this season are all on the other side of the bracket: Alabama, Missouri and South Carolina.

Seed history

This will be the 11th SEC Tournament since the league ditched divisions following the 2010-11 season. It will be just the second time in the current era that Kentucky has been the 3 seed, and the other instance came last year, when 2-seeded Tennessee beat the Cats in the semifinals.

A different-numbered seed has won the SEC Tournament in each of the past four seasons: 2-seeded Tennessee last year, 1-seeded Alabama in 2021, 5-seeded Auburn in 2019 and 4-seeded Kentucky in 2018 (the Cats’ most recent trip to the SEC title game). Remember, the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 tournament, where UK would have been the 1 seed.

The 3 seed has won the SEC Tournament just twice in 11 seasons using the current seeding format. Ole Miss did it in 2013, and Vanderbilt did it in 2012, beating Kentucky’s eventual national championship team in the tourney finals.

Kentucky’s four SEC Tournament titles under the current format were won as the 1 seed twice (2015 and 2017), the 2 seed (2016) and the 4 seed (2018).

Players to watch

SEC coaches have voted on the best players in the league, and those results were announced Monday.

Of the eight players to earn All-SEC first-team honors, six are expected to be active for this week’s tournament: Alabama’s Brandon Miller (the SEC’s player of the year, according to league coaches), Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe, Mississippi State’s Tolu Smith, Missouri’s Kobe Brown, Tennessee’s Santiago Vescovi and Texas A&M’s Wade Taylor IV.

USA Today posted a new 2023 NBA mock draft Monday, and those projections included several SEC players: Alabama’s Miller at No. 4 (the top pick among college players), Arkansas’ Anthony Black at No. 7, Arkansas’ Nick Smith Jr. at No. 8, Kentucky’s Cason Wallace at No. 11, South Carolina’s GG Jackson at No. 14, Arkansas’ Ricky Council IV at No. 38 and Kentucky’s Tshiebwe at No. 49.

SEC injuries

This year’s SEC Tournament will be missing some of the league’s biggest stars.

Several teams in the SEC have been hit hard by injuries, especially over the past few weeks, and that will have a negative impact on the star power in Nashville.

Preseason All-SEC selection Sahvir Wheeler remains out for Kentucky after playing in just nine of 18 conference games during the regular season. Wheeler has not played since Feb. 4 due to an ankle injury, and the senior point guard had a “minor procedure” unrelated to that injury last week, according to John Calipari, that will keep him sidelined, with a timetable that stretches into the NCAA Tournament.

Florida’s Colin Castleton (hand) and Vanderbilt’s Liam Robbins (leg) are out for the season as a result of recent injuries. Robbins and Castleton were both first-team SEC selections, as voted on by league coaches earlier this week. Robbins was named the SEC defensive player of the year.

Tennessee guard Zakai Zeigler suffered a torn ACL on Feb. 28. He was named a second-team All-SEC player and an all-league defender this week.

Kentucky guard Cason Wallace — an SEC all-freshman team selection this week — is also questionable for the SEC Tournament after being injured in a game last week.

SEC bracketology

The consensus in college basketball projection circles is that eight SEC teams will ultimately make the NCAA Tournament field. That would tie the league record for most SEC teams in a single NCAA Tournament. (The SEC also had eight teams in 2018.)

Going into the SEC Tournament, the only one of those eight teams that is close to the bubble cutline on most boards is Mississippi State, which is included among the “last four teams in” March Madness on ESPN’s latest bracketology board. Mississippi State is the 9 seed in the SEC Tournament and will play Florida at 1 p.m. Thursday.

The other seven SEC teams that are expected to make the NCAA Tournament (with their latest ESPN bracketology seeds): Alabama (1 seed), Tennessee (3 seed), Kentucky (5 seed), Texas A&M (7 seed), Missouri (8 seed), Arkansas (9 seed) and Auburn (9 seed).

Strangely enough, Arkansas (19-12, 8-10 SEC) had a losing record in the league and will be the 10 seed in this week’s conference tournament, yet the Razorbacks are still No. 18 nationally in the NET ratings. And Tennessee (22-9, 11-7 SEC) is the 5 seed in the SEC Tournament, yet the Vols were the No. 3 team nationally in the NET ratings to begin this week, behind only Houston and Alabama.

ESPN’s bracketology to begin the week had 10 Big Ten teams in the NCAA Tournament, the only conference with more projected to make it than the SEC.

Quad 1 teams

The Selection Sunday show will take place about three hours after the SEC Tournament final ends — at 6 p.m. Sunday on CBS — and while no team is going to move the needle too much this week, there’s still a chance to add a little to a March Madness résumé.

The ever-important Quad 1 games — judged to be the most difficult, according to the NCAA’s rating system — look good on such résumés, so it certainly wouldn’t hurt a team’s seeding prospects to pick up an additional win or two in that category this week.

For neutral-site games, Quad 1 opportunities come against opponents that are ranked in the top 50 of the NCAA’s NET ratings. The SEC has eight such teams heading into the postseason: No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Tennessee, No. 18 Arkansas, No. 19 Kentucky, No. 23 Texas A&M, No. 32 Auburn, No. 46 Mississippi State and No. 48 Missouri.

UK can’t get another Quad 1 win in its first game. All three possible opponents are ranked outside that top 50: Vanderbilt (No. 82), Georgia (No. 151) and LSU (No. 154). But the Cats could pick up a Quad 1 win if they advance to the semifinals Saturday, when they’d play either Texas A&M, Auburn or Arkansas. It’s also likely that another Quad 1 foe would be waiting for the Wildcats should they make it to Sunday’s league title game.

Kentucky was 1-7 in Quad 1 games just a few weeks ago. The Cats go into the SEC Tournament with a 6-7 mark in such games.

SEC Tournament odds

So, who’s going to win the 2023 SEC Tournament?

KenPom releases conference tournament probabilities for every league in every postseason, and the percentages for the SEC were posted Tuesday.

Those numbers show Kentucky with a 71.7 percent chance to make it to the Saturday semifinals, a 36.2 percent chance to advance to the Sunday finals, and a 13.3 percent chance to win the SEC Tournament championship.

UK has the third-best chance to win the title, according to those numbers, behind Alabama (33.8 percent) and Tennessee (25.9 percent) — two teams on the other side of the tourney bracket. The rest of the list: Texas A&M (9.7 percent), Arkansas (5.9), Auburn (4.1), Missouri (2.7), Mississippi State (1.9), Vanderbilt (1.7) and Florida (1.0), with Ole Miss, LSU, Georgia and South Carolina all having less than a 1 percent chance of winning.

Several sports books have released betting odds ahead of the SEC Tournament, and they’re all pretty much the same. These were the DraftKings odds to win the championship on the eve of the tourney opener: Alabama (3-2), Tennessee (3-1), Kentucky (4-1), Texas A&M (11-2), Auburn (12-1), Arkansas (12-1), Missouri (25-1), Vanderbilt (40-1), Mississippi State (50-1), Florida (60-1), Ole Miss (500-1), Georgia (500-1), South Carolina (800-1) and LSU (1,000-1).

SEC Tournament

At Bridgestone Arena in Nashville

(All times Eastern)

Wednesday

No. 13 seed Ole Miss 67, No. 12 South Carolina 61

About 9:30 p.m.: No. 11 Georgia vs. No. 14 LSU (SEC Network)

Thursday

1 p.m.: No. 8 Florida vs. No. 9 Mississippi State (SEC Network)

About 3:30 p.m.: No. 5 Tennessee vs. No. 13 Ole Miss (SEC Network)

7 p.m.: No. 7 Auburn vs. No. 10 Arkansas (SEC Network)

About 9:30 p.m.: No. 6 Vanderbilt vs. Georgia-LSU winner (SEC Network)

Friday

1 p.m.: No. 1 Alabama vs. Florida-Mississippi State winner (ESPN)

About 3:30 p.m.: No. 4 Missouri vs. Tennessee-South Carolina-Ole Miss winner (ESPN)

7 p.m.: No. 2 Texas A&M vs. Arkansas-Auburn winner (SEC Network)

About 9:30 p.m.: No. 3 Kentucky vs. Georgia-LSU-Vanderbilt winner (SEC Network)

Saturday

Semifinal games at 1:00 and about 3:30 p.m. (ESPN)

Sunday

1 p.m.: Championship game (ESPN)

Kentucky hasn’t been to an SEC title game in five years. Is now the time to end that skid?

John Calipari’s SEC Tournament history as basketball coach at Kentucky

Calipari says Wallace, two other UK players not practicing yet ahead of SEC Tournament

Kentucky stays put in new AP Top 25 rankings. Where does bracketology have the Wildcats?

Oscar Tshiebwe at the center of chippy UK-Arkansas game. ‘They tried to punk us.’