With five games left in the regular season, who has the toughest stretch?
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00:00 Welcome into Baymouth Central's Just a Minute alongside Blake Beuther.
00:04 I'm Katie Windham and last night, Blake, it was a crazy game inside Coleman Cossium.
00:08 Alabama came back for the overtime victory against the Florida Gators to remain
00:12 atop the SEC standings and stay perfect at home in SEC plays.
00:16 The Crimson Tide is really going for
00:18 its third regular season title in the last four years.
00:22 And now all SEC teams have had their midweek bye.
00:25 Every team has played the same number of games.
00:27 All teams played 13 games and currently, like I said,
00:29 Alabama is at the top with an 11-2 record.
00:33 One game ahead of the rest of the field, 10 a season, second at 10-3.
00:36 Auburn and South Carolina both at 9-4 and then Florida and Kentucky are both 8-5.
00:41 So we're gonna kind of look at all teams have five games left in conference play.
00:45 Maybe who has the most challenging schedule left to kind of get to that path
00:50 of the regular season crown.
00:52 So sorry for talking so much at the beginning, everyone, but
00:54 I'm gonna kind of go through what the schedules look like for
00:57 the remaining or for kind of the teams at the top.
00:59 And then Blake, you'll kind of tell me what you think about who's got the toughest.
01:04 So Alabama goes to Kentucky this Saturday.
01:07 Blake will be there.
01:08 They go to Ole Miss on Wednesday, and I believe Blake will be there for that.
01:11 And then Tennessee at home next Saturday, which is obviously gonna be a huge game.
01:17 Go back to Florida after the tough game you had last night and
01:20 then in the season at home against Arkansas.
01:22 So Alabama has three of the five games left on the road.
01:25 Tennessee hosts A&M and Auburn, then has to go to Alabama and
01:28 South Carolina, then ends the season hosting Kentucky.
01:31 Auburn goes to Georgia, goes to Tennessee,
01:35 hosts Mississippi State, who they lost to on the road, goes to Missouri, and
01:39 then hosts Georgia, South Carolina, hosts Ole Miss, goes to A&M,
01:43 has a tough stretch of hosting Florida and Tennessee, and
01:46 then ends the season at Mississippi State.
01:48 Florida has probably the easiest hosting Vandy and Mizzou.
01:51 This is the easiest.
01:52 They face two of the three.
01:53 Yeah.
01:54 The two worst teams three times.
01:55 They host Vandy and Missouri, they get to South Carolina, host Alabama, and
01:58 go finish the season at Vanderbilt.
02:00 Kentucky hosts Alabama, goes to Mississippi State, hosts Arkansas and
02:04 Vanderbilt, and then finishes the regular season at Tennessee.
02:08 So kind of, I know that was a lot, Blake, but out of the teams that are at the top
02:11 in contention, kind of who has the most difficult schedule over this final
02:14 stretch?
02:15 To me, one of the most difficult schedules is South Carolina, but
02:22 I'm hesitant to say that it's the most difficult.
02:25 I don't know, I don't really consider South Carolina a serious contender after
02:29 the last couple weeks of play that they had.
02:32 When they went on the road to Auburn, lost by 40, and then came back home and
02:35 lost a home game to LSU, that kind of eliminated them, in my mind,
02:39 from contention.
02:40 So I'm really looking at Alabama, I'm looking at Tennessee.
02:45 Florida is a contender, Auburn's a contender.
02:47 I don't know about Kentucky, again, after last night's loss to LSU.
02:51 LSU just keeps beating all these teams at the top.
02:53 Boiling heat streams.
02:54 Right, and so Florida, like you said, has a really easy schedule.
02:58 I think Auburn, outside of their road trip to Tennessee,
03:02 has one of the easier schedules.
03:04 So I'm really looking at Alabama and Tennessee.
03:07 Oddly enough, the two teams at the top have two of the toughest schedules
03:11 remaining.
03:11 I think I would lean Tennessee, honestly, as the toughest schedule.
03:14 Alabama has a tough one, obviously, with three games on the road.
03:18 Two of those are against upper level teams in Kentucky and Florida,
03:23 a rematch against a really tough Florida team that
03:26 had a really good chance to beat them in Coleman Coliseum last night.
03:28 But Tennessee, their final four games are against ranked teams right now.
03:33 And so Tennessee, their next game this Saturday
03:36 is against Texas A&M, which is a team that already beat them,
03:40 but it's in Knoxville.
03:41 And then their last four games are Auburn, Alabama, South Carolina,
03:44 Kentucky.
03:45 And two of those games, Alabama and South Carolina, are on the road.
03:48 So when you're playing four straight road games to end the season,
03:51 two of them being on the road, it's kind of hard to not
03:54 think that that is the toughest schedule remaining of these SEC contenders.
03:59 And if you're Alabama chasing a regular season title,
04:02 you're hoping that the team right there on your tail
04:04 has the hardest schedule remaining.
04:07 But obviously, one of those games is Saturday, March 2nd,
04:10 whenever Tennessee is going to come to Tuscaloosa and play Alabama in a rematch.
04:13 The last time these two teams played when Alabama went to Knoxville,
04:17 Tennessee got a 20-point win, looked dominant the entire game.
04:19 Probably the worst game Alabama's played in conference play this season.
04:23 And so it kind of looks like if Tennessee can hold serve at home
04:29 in their next two games against Texas A&M and Auburn,
04:31 that that March 2nd game is going to go a long way
04:34 into deciding who wins the SEC regular season title.
04:38 But even if Alabama were to lose that home game against Tennessee,
04:41 depending on what else happens, Tennessee still
04:43 has games left against South Carolina on the road, a team that already
04:47 beat them at home, and they have to play Kentucky.
04:50 And Kentucky can beat anyone on any given night
04:53 with how good their offense is.
04:54 And so with that in mind, I think Tennessee definitely
04:58 has the most challenging remaining schedule with those last four
05:02 games being against ranked teams.
05:04 Yeah, it's definitely setting up for an exciting finish
05:07 to the end of the college basketball season.
05:09 The SEC is having probably its best season it's had in a long time.
05:13 Could have anywhere up to nine teams in.
05:16 Some teams towards the bubble are kind of starting
05:18 to beat up on each other.
05:19 But it's going to be a strong finish.
05:23 And I think, like you said, a lot of it's
05:25 going to come down to that March 2nd game between Alabama
05:27 and Tennessee inside Coleman Coliseum to kind of see who's
05:31 going to win the SEC, which is going to be a lot of fun.
05:34 And Bama Central will have you covered with all of that.
05:37 But that will wrap up today's Just a Minute.
05:39 Thank you so much for watching.
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