Missouri opens SEC basketball play on Tuesday night against Tennessee. On Sunday, we reviewed the non-conference season. Today, we take a look ahead to the conference slate.
At 9-3, Missouri will need to go no worse than 10-8 to put itself on the NCAA Tournament bubble. The Tigers' non-conference schedule didn't have a lot of bite to it, so there will need to be some quality wins in league play to give them a chance to play in the tournament. Fortunately, the Tigers will play 15 games against 11 teams currently in the KenPom top 100.
Tennessee put together the best non-conference slate of anybody in the league. The Vols beat Gonzaga, Memphis and Louisville and lost in overtime to Kansas. They're the hands-down pre-season league favorite.
The next tier includes Auburn and Kentucky. Both were pre-season top ten teams who have played at a level perhaps just below that. Both teams lost to Duke (Auburn was much more competitive). The Tigers lost to NC State and Kentucky to Seton Hall. The Wildcats had an impressive blowout win over North Carolina and have their usual host of young talent. Auburn beat Washington and Arizona and won the SEC a season ago.
Mississippi State could be in the top group with those teams. The Bulldogs are 12-1, but didn't have a great non-conference schedule.
After those four teams, there's a logjam of 10-2 to 8-4 squads that can be either pretty good or pretty bad. On any given day, Ole Miss, LSU, Alabama, Arkansas, Mizzou, Vandy and Florida could win or lose to every other team in that group.
Georgia, Texas A&M and South Carolina appear to be teams very likely to play on the first day of the SEC Tournament. All are capable of springing an upset, but none are probably consistent enough to make a major push.
Pomeroy picks Missouri to go 6-12 in SEC play (the actual won/loss prediction is 7-11, but if you take each individual game prediction it adds up to 6-12, so feel free to explain that to me), which would leave the Tigers 15-15 overall and needing a win or two in the SEC Tournament to make the NIT. But ten of those games are picked within five points either way (with another three within six). So there's a lot of wiggle room in those predictions, as you'd expect in a league that seems to be as bunched as the SEC, especially in the middle.
THE PREDICTION
The Tigers are playing well and home court is worth something, but we see a loss to start the conference schedule against Tennessee. But we think the Tigers rebound and win at South Carolina, then return home to beat Alabama. We'll give them a loss in College Station, though it certainly could swing the other way. That leaves Missouri 2-2 (11-5 overall).
Missouri hasn't done well in Fayetteville recently and we don't see that changing. We think they beat LSU at home and lose at Auburn. A home game against Vandy is a must-win and the Tigers will before losing in Knoxville. So we've got 4-5 (13-8) through the first half of the SEC schedule.
This is where the schedule opens up just a little bit. We think the Tigers beat Texas A&M and Arkansas at home, then pick up a road win at Ole Miss. They come home for a game that's going to have everybody fired up against Kentucky...but we think the three-game winning streak ends there. Mizzou stands 7-6 (16-9) with five games to go and a chance to play their way into the NCAA Tournament discussion with a strong finish.
The problem is the first two games are road games at Florida and Mississippi State. We don't think the Tigers win either. We'll give them two out of three to end the regular season against South Carolina at home, at Georgia and home against Ole Miss to finish 9-9 (18-12).
Is that enough to get them into the tournament conversation? Probably not. That wouldn't feature a lot of really strong wins. Missouri would probably need to make the conference tournament final (or at least the semis) to have much of a shot. But that's a solid improvement from where we saw this team six weeks ago.
