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The fourteen teams in the SEC (disregarding divisional standings ) currently stack up like this: Vandy and LSU are leading the way, both standing at 11-1 and both riding 10 game winning streaks. (By the way, they do not play each other in the regular season so the SEC Tourney may be the first time they meet). There are now three teams tied with the 3rd best record at 8-4: South Carolina, Arkansas, and Alabama. Two teams, Kentucky and Texas A&M have the 6th best record at 6-6. Florida and Mississippi State are tied for the 8th best record at 5-7. Missouri and Mississippi are tied with the 10th best record at 4-8. The 12th best record is a tie with Tennessee and Auburn at 3-9 and Georgia has the worst record at 2-10.
In the SEC, only the top 12 teams make the conference championship tourney. If the tourney were held today UGA would be out and so would UT. Auburn, by virtue of beating aTm holds the tie breaker against UT, even though both teams are 3-9.
Alabama, sitting at 8-4 is still a bit of a mystery. We have won 3 series but those came against the three worst teams in the conference. The afore mentioned UT, AU, and UGA. We did lose our weekend series to Arky, but we did not get swept. Taking that 3rd game was huge for us because it represented our first win against an actual quality team.
The way I see it this weekends series with Mississippi is huge for Bama. We still have 3 games with LSU and 3 games with Vandy. Not to be negative, but we could easily get swept in both those series. But of the remaining 4 series, Mississippi, MSU, Mizzou, and aTm, all of those series are winnable by Bama. So playing a little guessing game, and being optimistic, let's guess we get swept by LSU & Vandy and then win 3 of 4 of the other series, 2-1,losing the 4th 1-2. Our final record would then be 15-15. I have to tell you if we were to finish 15-15 I think it would be considered an outstanding season for a young team and Coach Gaspard. 15-15 could, and really should, put us in the NCAA tourney.
And that is why this series this weekend with Mississippi at their place is huge. After a great 19-1 start to the season Mississippi has gone just 4-8 since. They have lost their last 3 SEC series, two of those series losses coming to just average teams in UF and aTm. If we can take care of business this weekend in Oxford (winning at least two games) I think we are in good shape. But stumble at Mississippi and well it may reveal that the season to date has been more a function of an easy schedule that the results of a good young team.
Finally, in other SEC news, LSU is ranked #2 nationally in the USA Today poll. They are followed by Vandy #3, USCe #8, Arky #10, UK #14, MSU #16, and Mississippi #18. Alabama got some votes but did not crack the Top 25. Obviously a series win against #18 Mississippi would help us with getting ranked.