Bruce Pearl wasn’t looking to make excuses, but he wanted to search for answers.
Chief among them: Why the SEC — after one of its most promising seasons as a league in years — faltered in the NCAA Tournament. The league sent six teams into the 68-team field, with four of those teams earning a top-four seed: Auburn (No. 2 in the Midwest Region and the fifth overall seed), Kentucky (No. 2 in the East Region), Tennessee (No. 3 in the South Region) and Arkansas (No. 4 in the West Region).
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Despite that, and what was considered a generally impressive season from the league throughout the 2021-22 campaign, only one of those programs, Arkansas, made is past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. The Razorbacks made it to the Elite Eight, while Kentucky lost in the first round to 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s, Auburn lost in the second round to 10th-seeded Miami and Tennessee lost in the second round to 11th-seeded Michigan. Alabama and LSU, both six-seeds, lost in the opening round to 11-seeds Notre Dame and Iowa State, respectively.
“I’m going to dispel the rumor that the SEC was overrated during the course of the season,” Pearl said Wednesday while looking back on the season that was. “That’s just not right. It’s wrong. (The SEC) demonstrated that throughout the year.”
The SEC’s showing in the NCAA Tournament was certainly lackluster, but Pearl wanted to defend the league’s reputation after it came under scrutiny following its collective postseason shortcomings.
He pointed to Kentucky as one example. The Wildcats, who entered the tournament with the second-best odds to win the national title, beat both participants of Monday’s national championship game during the regular season. Kentucky had a 29-point win against North Carolina on a neutral court in December, as well as an 18-point win at Kansas during the Big 12/SEC Challenge in late January.
“That’s just a fact,” Pearl said.
Another fact: the league’s head-to-head win in the Big 12/SEC Challenge during the season. The SEC went 6-4 against the Big 12 in that midseason showcase, including Kentucky’s romp of Kansas and Alabama’s upset of then-No. 4 Baylor (the eventual No. 1 seed in the East Region). The Tide also had regular-season wins against Gonzaga and Houston.
While that, along with Auburn’s rise to No. 1 in the AP poll for three weeks during the season and the six teams in the NCAA Tournament spoke to the overall strength of the league throughout the 2021-22 season, it still doesn’t account for the conference’s less-than-stellar showing in March. As noted, five of the six SEC teams to make the NCAA Tournament lost to double-digit seeds, with Arkansas the lone exception; the Razorbacks lost to second-seeded Duke in the Elite Eight.
“Why didn’t we advance in the NCAA Tournament? Partly due to matchups,” Pearl said. “I think partly due to the grind of the SEC this year. I’m not offering excuses. There’s no excuses here. I just— I just talked about answering questions and explanations as to, we have to ask the question: Why was Arkansas the only team that got to the Elite 8, when there were probably three or four teams, including Auburn, that could’ve but didn’t?”
Pearl can ultimately only speak for himself and his team, which started the year 22-1 before going 6-5 down the stretch, but he ventured to guess that the nature of the SEC’s strength, from top to bottom, took a toll on teams during the course of an 18-game conference slate.
“I do think it works out,” Pearl said. “I do think we never quite got a huge second wind that I know we got in ‘19 after we finished fifth in the regular season and won our last four regular-season games, got hot in the tournament, got hot at the end and made our run.”
Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.
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