The pre-conference work has almost been completed. There is still the SEC/Big 12 Challenge to deal with and a few games this week, but for the most part the remainder of the SEC regular season is going to be SEC on SEC crime.
The league did well in some cases during the non-cons, terrible in others. As a result of a conference with no clear-cut favorite and a bottom that needs to have its diaper changed, the SEC starts conference play ranked fourth among the conferences by Sagarin and RPI and pretty much every other site.
Still, we look at Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology has eight teams in the Big Dance with only the Big 10 having more.
There will be a lot of cannibalizations in this conference because we know how difficult it is to play on the road. But it should be exciting, especially with the SEC Network and ESPN2 showing five SEC vs. SEC games on Wednesday (although in a strange bit of scheduling, there are four teams who do not play until next week).
Anyway, here is a look at the 14 teams and where they stand going into the conference season. There are three rankings including the Bracket Matrix that uses a combination of all the projections.