March Outlook

The Kentucky men and women are playing quite well at the right time, and I look for both of them to go far in the upcoming NCAA tournament. Should the Cats win the SEC Tournament this week, a number one seed is not out of the question. But Auburn could probably also grab a top seed with a tournament championship.

The Ohio State men need a strong Big Ten tournament run for anyone to have confidence in their prospect of a deep NCAA run. But they do have the talent to turn things around. I don’t get to see the OSU women play very often but they do bring a lot of skill to the table.

I had pretty well given up on the Blue Jackets and I still don’t think they have much of a chance of making the playoffs. But they did win four games of a five-game road trip in February, and finished that month with 8 wins and 4 losses. In looking at the standings, Columbus is “first team out” of a wild-card spot. But at 10 points behind #8 Washington, it would be a tall order for the CBJ to get back in the race.

We’ve already had a couple days with temperatures in the 70s here, so Spring has sprung. I just had a new roof and gutters put on the house, and am hoping to make some progress on my long-running kitchen remodel project. I continue to spend a lot of time volunteering for our local radio club, and have been listing some of our surplus parts and equipment on eBay. Look for us using the seller ID “bluegrassars”.

Wrapping Up The Regular Season

The Ohio State men were in position for a share of the Big Ten regular season championship, but poor play down the stretch ended up leaving them in a tie for fourth.

A road win at eventual co-champion Illinois on February 24th gave reason for optimism despite having lost at home to Iowa. But the Bucks then lost at Maryland (a sub-.500 team) then returned home and were upset by cellar-dweller Nebraska. A win over Michigan State followed, but then Sunday on Senior Day OSU lost to visiting Michigan. The Bucks were 2-4 over the last six games against unranked opponents.

Things are considerably better for the Kentucky men. The Cats lost at Tennessee and at Arkansas (a team that seldom loses at home) to finish in a tie for second place with Tennessee with 14-4 conference records. Auburn won the regular season championship at 15-3, having pulled out a bunch of close wins.

In the conference tournaments this week, Kentucky is a 3-seed and Ohio State is a 6-seed.

SEC Tournament Champions

The Kentucky women made a dramatic turnaround in the month of February since my last post, winning their last six conference games to go from a 2-8 league record to an even-Steven 8-8. I think the big difference was the emergence of Dre’una Edwards who had several 20+ point games. Along with Rhyne Howard, this gave the Cats two big scoring threats and made them difficult to handle.

As the SEC Tournament started, I expected UK to overachieve. Sure enough, they quickly routed Mississippi State, LSU and Tennessee to earn a spot in Sunday’s championship game against the nation’s #1 team, South Carolina.

In February, the Gamecocks visited Lexington and beat Kentucky, their last loss. Although South Carolina held a working lead for most of the game, the Cats rallied in the fourth quarter to make it close.

Yesterday’s game was very similar, except this time UK got over the hump and won 64-62 with the winning shot a 3-pointer by Edwards with just a few seconds left. So the Cats won their second-ever SEC Tournament title, the first since 1982.

With a 19-11 overall record, Kentucky will not be a particularly high seed in the NCAA, but they are clearly playing as well as anybody in the country and will be a force to be reckoned with.

In the Big Ten, the Indiana and Michigan women looked so good that I actually quit following the conference standings. But Ohio State kept battling while IU and UM faltered, and the Bucks ended up sharing the regular season conference title with Iowa. In the semifinals of the Big Ten tournament, the Bucks ran into a newly-rejuvenated Hoosier team and lost after a quarterfinal win over Michigan State.

At 23-6 overall, OSU is currently ranked #14 in the AP poll. So, a top-4 seed is a distinct possibility.