Kentucky at Tennessee. 11 a.m. CBS. Should be a great one. UT should be fired up to knock the ‘Cats off. I’m just not sure that Ky is that great. They have great players, but the team is ugly and they don’t shoot the ball very well. Pearl should have his team jacked.
Texas at Texas A&M-A&M lost to Baylor the other night, but both these teams should be tourney teams. The Big 12 can play some ugly basketball at times, so if it looks bad at the start, you’ve got Vandy-Arkansas on SEC Network at 12:30. Channel 21.

Mississippi State at South Carolina 5 p.m. ESPN-Devan Downey is a fun player to watch and State has some exciting players, too. You never know if any team will shoot well in college basketball today, but these teams are capable. State has a slight chance at a tourney bid. Very slight. Will probably have to at least go to the finals of SEC tourney.

Villanova at Syracuse- 8 p.m. ESPN. Great  Big East matchup though I find it hard to believe ‘Nova has a shot to beat the ‘Cuse in the Carrier Dome. They’re just too good at home. Could be a good game though.

Alabama plays at Ole Miss tomorrow at 1 on ESPN2. Anthony Grant has had a bad first season. Maybe it’s an aberration.
Auburn vs LSU at Auburn. 6 p.m. on Fox Sports South. Jeff Lebo has run out of lifelines in my opinion. It’s been six years without an NCAA appearance and with no chance unless they win the tourney this year, which is highly unlikely, it looks to be about over for Lebo. I hate it. He seems like a good guy who knows the game, but Auburn plays terrible defense and can’t hold leads in the second half. They’ve lost about three or four games where they were leading handily. Arkansas and Ole Miss on the road really stand out to me. Those were bad losses. It’s not looking good for Lebo.

Tulane at UAB at Bartow. 1 p.m. No TV. Another lousy opponent for the Blazers to look terrible against to further hurt their chances of getting a bid. Maybe they can play well, but there is no margin for error with this team and I just don’t have much confidence in them the way they’ve been playing. How can a team go from being a strong NCAA team (maybe a sixth or seventh seed) in early January to being on the bubble looking in?  If they can wake up and start playing well they have a chance. But they’ll have to win tomorrow (surely they can do that) and beat Memphis at home Wednesday (8 p.m. CSS) and then possibly steal one against UTEP, which I don’t see happening. If they lose one or  two of these three, particularly at home, they will probably need to win the tournament. They just shoot the ball terribly. Maybe this Fields kid can give them a lift. He seems to be able to shoot the three. Blazers’ backs are against the wall. They need to respond for any chance to play into March.

Kevin Scarbinsky’s column about Cousins this morning in The News has some merit, but I tend to agree with the camp at ESPN that says he’s basically a powder keg ready to explode. One guy said he’s a criminal. Well he hasn’t committed a crime that I know of, just seems like he’s capable. He’s a great player and I’m sure he hasn’t totally matured yet as Scarbinsky writes, but he seems closer to Allen Iverson than he does Grant Hill. Does look like a thug, too, no doubt.
We’ll see how the season plays out and then in the NBA when he’ll have more money than he’ll know what to do with. He just seems like he’s ready to go ballistic any minute. There is plenty of  basketball left for Kentucky and more time for some bad behavior.

The guy just has this anger written all over his face. He doesn’t look like he has any fun and nothing would make him happier than beating another player up. He’s a shaky character in my book and someone who looks ready to explode on a moment’s notice despite the claim that he’s just not matured yet. To me he looks like a grown man and acts like it. I don’t know how much more he can mature. Maybe he can. He certainly needs to change his attitude.

I think Vandy is a special team. They were down by five to Georgia with 42 seconds left and came back to tie it with 15 seconds left on an A.J. Ogilvy tip in and won it in overtime, 98-96. Georgia is a good basketball team. I know their record doesn’t reflect it, but they play extremely hard and shot the ball very well against Vandy last night. They made some threes from downtown Nashville last night. A good victory for the Commodores in a game you could say they got outplayed in. But they hung in tough and pulled it out. They moved  to 21-6 and 10-3.
The SEC is a good basketball conference. It doesn’t have the depth of the Big East or even the Big Ten, but the teams are all competitive; you can’t take a day off or you’ll get beaten.

Georgia’s first year coach, Mark Fox, has them playing hard, and I think their future is bright with him at the helm. He took his last five Nevada teams to postseason play, and the ‘Dogs can shoot the ball a lot better. They look a lot more fluid under Fox than they did under his predecessor Dennis Felton. They dropped to 12-14 overall and 4-9 in league play.

Looks like Ky, Vandy, UT and probably Florida are in. Ole Miss and State would probably have to win the SEC tourney to make it to big tourney. But it’s been another good year with some great individual play and there are still some big games left.

Jimmy Dykes of ESPN showed an interesting stat for Kentucky last night at halftime of their win over South Carolina. The last five NCAA champions, UNC (’09), Kansas (’08), Florida (’07 and ’06) and UNC again (’05) all averaged shooting 40 percent from behind the three point line. Some shot a little better and some were right at 40%.
Ky shoots 31% from trifecta. Dykes believes that will prevent Ky from winning the national championship. I kind of agree with him.

Kentucky was three-of-11 last night against South Carolina though they shot 50% from the field. Patrick Patterson had 23 and DeMarcus Cousins 19. They also were three-of-16 against Vandy, but still pulled that out 58-56.

I agree with Dykes that their three-point shooting could prevent them from beating teams that shoot the ball a lot better than them. They take on a team like a Duke or a West Virginia– a lot of Big East teams for that matter, Notre Dame shoots the ball great though they’re on the edge for a bid but in my mind deserving–I think they’ll struggle to win. With Patterson and Cousins they’ll be in every game, but Wall and Bledsoe must pick it up if the Wildcats want to cut down the nets in Indianapolis in April.

Two years ago when Cal had that great Memphis team, they couldn’t shoot free throws. Everybody was saying that would come back to haunt them, but  Calipari said it didn’t matter. They lost the national championship game to Kansas because they couldn’t shoot free throws. This is the same deal.

If I was Cal, I would be working on shooting threes in practice for sure.