I’ve been saying for weeks that Tennessee should throw the SEC Tournament. That they beat the Auburn Tigers to reach the championship game doesn’t change my thoughts on that, and recent comments by Joe Lunardi of ESPN only further prove that.
Lunardi’s Saturday night projections ahead of the Vols’ matchup with the Florida Gators for the league title Sunday had Rick Barnes’ team locked in as a No. 2 seed and UF locked in as the last No. 1 seed. Nothing that would happen in the Sunday matchup would be able to change that.
Think about what he’s saying. Tennessee, which entered the day one spot below Florida in the NET rankings and entered the tournament in the top eight of both polls as a projected 2-seed, wouldn’t be able to do anything to improve its standing by winning the tournament title for what is universally recognized as the toughest conference in the nation.
They would beat Auburn and Florida in the SEC Tournament to win it, and both of those teams would be No. 1 seeds while they would be a No. 2 seed. If you want to say Auburn was penciled in as a top seed for winning the SEC Regular Season title, fine, but how could Florida have been penciled in, even with their Saturday win over the Alabama Crimson Tide?
Florida was fighting for the No. 1 seed before the tourney, and they split the regular season series with Tennessee. This is a rubber match, so if the Vols win, they would have a head-to-head advantage and the tournament championship. The Gators having a better regular season record by one game would outweigh that?
Anyway, the truth is, Lunardi is not lying. Recent history has proven that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee literally throws conference tournament results out the window unless a surprise team wins it to get an automatic bid. They clearly only value the regular season otherwise.
Whether it’s laziness or understanding the gimmicky nature of the tourneys is anybody’s guess, but just three years ago, Tennessee entered the SEC Tournament as a projected No. 3 seed, won the whole thing, and entered March Madness as, well, a 3-seed. That was the moment right there to stop caring about these things.
Even before the Selection Committee stopped caring about conference tournaments, there was a legitimate argument that it’s not worth the effort to exert your energy trying to win the events at the expense of being fresh in the NCAA Tournament for maybe one seed better if you are a lock to go to the Big Dance. Now, it’s certain.
Tennessee should have thrown the SEC Tournament on Friday against Texas. It wasn’t worth the effort to get to Sunday just to potentially be the fourth No. 1 seed, but it’s certainly not worth the effort given what Lunardi is saying. The Vols, who only go seven-deep, have just been wasting their time.
