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SEC would do well to land 4 NCAA bids

Mississippi State's Lamar Peters surveys the floor while being guarded by Arkansas' Daryl Macon in the Bulldogs' 84-78 win in Bud Walton Arena on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017.

During Arkansas' comeback win at Texas A&M on Tuesday, Pat Forde, the nationally respected columnist for Yahoo.com, tweeted that Kentucky was good but that SEC games can be boring because the conference is so bad in basketball.

Which has become the norm for the conference that is a king in football.

It is still too early to say whether Arkansas, Georgia or Alabama will give the SEC a fourth team in the NCAA Tournament. The only locks appear to be Kentucky and Florida, and South Carolina -- which played the Gators on Wednesday night -- is in good shape.

The Razorbacks, who were bailed out by their bench against the Aggies, may need some help.

The Hogs' starters were 12 of 36 from the field (33.3 percent) and 2 of 9 on threes (22 percent), but the bench was 9 of 16 (56 percent) and 5 of 7 (71 percent), including Manny Watkins going 3 of 3 from behind the three-point line. Watkins, a senior, made the first three of his career Saturday in the win over Missouri.

He had attempted only eight before this season, but he's 4 of 7 as a senior. In 23 minutes off the bench, he also had 6 rebounds and 2 assists. He led the team in steals with three.

This means Mike Anderson has weapons, depth and a chance to rack up 20-plus wins.

The Razorbacks have an RPI of 35 and chances to improve that, especially with games at South Carolina, which had an RPI of 29 on Wednesday; at Florida, with an RPI of 4; and home against Georgia, with an RPI of 43.

The RPI of all the other opponents is too low to help, but a loss could really hurt. In that sense, Forde is right: From top to bottom, the league isn't good enough.

Kentucky looks like the cream of the crop with another outstanding freshman class -- four are starters -- and could run the SEC table if it can get a win at Florida on Feb. 4.

Going undefeated in the SEC and winning the SEC Tournament might not be enough to get the Wildcats more than a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Its signature nonconference wins were North Carolina, which is 17-3 and second in the ACC, and Michigan State, which has seven losses. For the first time in years, no one is saying to watch out for Tom Izzo and the Spartans in March, especially after last season, when they opened the tournament as a No. 2 seed and lost to No. 15 Middle Tennessee State.

Kentucky did have what are called good losses to UCLA, 18-1, and Louisville, 15-3.

As for Florida, its big nonconference win was over Seton Hall, which is eighth in the Big East. The Gators lost to Gonzaga, Duke and Florida State.

The third team that's seemingly in, the Gamecocks, hangs its hat on nonconference wins over Michigan, which is tied for 11th place in the Big Ten, and Syracuse, which is 11-8 overall.

In other words, the upper echelon of the SEC didn't help the league any more than the teams dreaming of an NIT bid.

Which is why the SEC has become a three-bid league. In the seven tournaments since 2010, three times the SEC has gotten only three bids. In the previous 20 years, that happened only twice -- 1990 and 2009.

There was a time when Arkansas was an even more respected program than Kentucky. From 1990-96, Nolan Richardson led the Razorbacks to three Final Fours, winning the championship in 1994. That's partly where the expectations come from for the program.

In that decade, the SEC had an average of 4.5 bids per year. That jumped to 5.5 bids from 2000-09, when the SEC had six teams invited seven different times.

Since then, the average is 3.8. That could go down if the experts who predict the field are right.

Sports on 01/19/2017