SEC FINALE

If you are a UK Wildcat fan, the first round of the SEC tournament shook out about as well as could be hoped. The two conference bubble teams that played today both went down in smoke. After a surprise loss to Alabama, Florida is definitely on the outside looking in.

Stranger still was the plight of Ole Miss. Georgia seemed hell bent on losing this game, building three point leads inside of 15 seconds in both regulation and overtime, only to foul a three point shooter both times with less than ten seconds left. Both times, Mississippi knocked down all three FTs. Mercifully, Corey Butler of UGa went the length of the floor with 5.5 seconds left in the first OT and dished to David Bliss (the burly white guy who UK fans might remember concussed Ramel Bradley a month or so back) who hit a 6 foot bank shot to win the game. The game ended well after midnight. If you are an UGA player, you aren't sleeping for at least the next four hours, and you have to go back out and play at 9:45 tomorrow night.

Now UK gets Georgia, arguably the SEC's worst team, which has lost 11 of its last 14 and is fresh off of overtime. That is a sweet draw, unless the Cats spit the bit and lose the game. A loss is bad, but even if Kentucky were to somehow blow it, they couldn't really be leapfrogged by either Ole Miss or Florida, both of whom were already behind UK in the pecking order and have had equally bad losses.

Add to that the losses by Baylor, Arizona State, and Villanova, and it stands to reason that Kentucky may have had its ticket punched tonight without ever taking the court.