Player of the Week
John Petty Jr. (Alabama) — This week, the 6-foot-5, 184-pound senior guard averaged 20.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.5 made threes. The Tide’s vet drilled 15-of-25 from the floor and went 9-of-16 from 3-point land in back-to-back victories at Kentucky and over Arkansas. With those nine threes, Petty took the throne by holding the new program record for career 3-pointers made (265). He currently ranks first on the team in scoring with an average of 14.3 PPG as Bama and Petty try to stay hot in search of their 9th straight win.
Who’s Hot?
KD Johnson (Georgia) — The 6-foot-1, 190-pound freshman guard posted an average of 17.5 points on shooting 51.9% from the field, adding 66.7% performance from 3-point range, in matchups with Auburn and Ole Miss. Johnson’s 21-point outburst against the Tigers marked the third-most ever by a Bulldog in their debut effort, behind two dominant players in Dominique Wilkins and Anthony Edwards.
Missouri — The Tigers are on a two-game win streak coming up with major conference wins against Texas A&M and South Carolina. Dru Smith’s 15 points against the Aggies was enough to aid in leading his team to a 16-point victory. Mizzou followed suit once more against the Gamecocks where they shot 58.3% from the field while going 38.5% from three. They also got 30 shots up from the charity stripe, connecting on 20 of them while USC only hit 8 of their 19 attempts.
Who’s Not?
Arkansas — The Razorbacks dropped two major-deficit games to LSU and Alabama this past week. Against the Tigers, they were basically outmatched in every possible statistic and trailed for basically the entire game aside from the first four minutes. Although Moody’s 28-point performance was impressive for the Razorbacks, they still lost to the tide by 31: The only time they were winning was following the first basket in which they scored. After that, it was downhill for this squad.
Olivier Sarr (Kentucky) — The senior center for the Wildcats is nothing short of colossal at 7-feet, 240-pounds Sarr has entered a critical role for this team. He’s averaging 10.3 points which has been brought down by his last two outings where he only posted six points in each game. In addition, for someone who rarely turns the ball over, he recorded two TOs per matchup. It seems that he’s also struggling to get fouled in turn get to the line for easy scoring opportunities.
Top 5 SEC Final Rankings (Prediction):
5. Missouri — The Tigers will probably finish just over .500 presumably around 9-7ish in SEC play. I honestly feel like a majority of their losses will be to in-conference teams. I would mark their chances of winning the conference or the SEC Tournament at a very, very low digit.
4. Florida — Now we’ve got the Gators who honestly are a good team and I think still have some proving to do. They’ll most likely end up with twice as many conference wins than losses putting them around 11-6 against the SEC.
3. LSU — Here it gets easy, but also very tricky. I think there’s little argument that you cannot place the Tigers in your Top 3 projection after how they’ve been playing. Call them streaky but I find their change of pace—whether it be international or not— to be incredibly difficult to keep up with. Although, I do not think they’ve got what it takes to end up in that SEC Tournament Final.
2. Tennessee — I think it’s fair to say that the Vols chances of winning the conference are in the hands of the surging Crimson Tide. If Bama keeps this streak up, they will have the SEC regular season title locked up. I would love to see these two teams matchup in the Tournament Final where I’d make it a coin toss to see who wins it.
1. Alabama — As previously mentioned, the Tide are undeniably HOT; and it seems that won’t be changing anytime soon. I’d say their chance of winning the division right now is over 80% purely due to their current dominance in conference play. But like I said, when it comes down to the Tournament, I see Bama and Tennessee battling it out in the end with the Tide coming out on top.