SEC Tournament Loss Leaves LSU In Precarious Position For NCAA Tournament

Image credit: LSU righthander Landon Marceaux

The SEC Tournament format and the conference standings combined to produce what might well have been an NCAA Tournament play-in game Tuesday in Hoover, Ala.

Georgia and Louisiana State finished the regular season with matching 13-17 SEC records, tied for the eighth-best record in the conference. On a tiebreaker, Georgia was seeded eighth in the SEC Tournament and got to wear its home whites, but really there was little to separate the two teams.

By virtue of those matching 13-17 SEC records, both the Bulldogs and Tigers appeared to be right on the NCAA Tournament bubble. One more regular-season win and they’d probably have come to Hoover feeling relatively comfortable. One more regular-season loss and they’d know they had a lot of work to do in the tournament. Instead, they landed right on the cut line.

A team can get in the NCAA Tournament with a 13-17 SEC record – Florida just did so in 2019, even after it lost in the single-elimination first-round of the SEC Tournament. But 13-17 can also leave you out in the cold on Selection Monday, as it did Kentucky in 2018, when the Wildcats were one of the very last teams left out of the field.

With so much riding on Tuesday’s result, Georgia defeated LSU, 4-1. Both teams did all their scoring in the first inning before the two pitching staffs settled in for eight scoreless innings to end the game.

LSU’s Landon Marceaux took a tough loss, throwing a complete game and keeping Georgia at bay after it put a four-spot on the board in the first inning. Georgia got a strong effort from Luke Wagner, Jaden Woods, Ben Harris and Jack Gowen to limit LSU to one run.

As thin as the margins seem to be, Georgia finishes the night feel good about its NCAA Tournament prospects. LSU, meanwhile, begins an anxious week.

“Absolutely. I think we’re absolutely in,” Georgia coach Scott Stricklin said. “I had said before this was virtually a play-in game. Us and LSU have the same records.

“That being said, LSU deserves to be in. Their strength of schedule is No. (3) in the country. Their RPI is in the top 25, and they are definitely one of the top 64 teams in the country.”

SEC coaches stumping for each other is a time-honored tradition in Hoover and Stricklin was well-versed in LSU’s resume. There’s a lot going for the Tigers, even after the loss. They rank No. 24 in RPI and No. 3 in strength of schedule. They are 10-8 in games outside Alex Box Stadium. They are 10-16 against top-50 RPI teams (and while that doesn’t sound impressive, it stacks up favorably with other bubble teams) and are 20-19 against top-100 RPI teams.

Everything about LSU’s resume says it belongs in the NCAA Tournament – except its conference record. The selection committee counts conference tournament games as a part of conference record, so LSU finished 13-18 in SEC play. Some, including some previous iterations of the selection committee, would prefer to disqualify teams that don’t finish at least .500 in conference play.

While that line of thinking might have merit in a vacuum, not every season is the same. And in this season, even setting aside all the irregularities produced by playing through a pandemic, the NCAA Tournament bubble is especially soft. Seven teams in the top 50 of RPI and 15 of the top 75 have losing conference records. A principled stand on conference records this season is not likely to be possible.

So, what then, to make of LSU? Coach Paul Mainieri made his case for the Tigers.

“If you’re asking me, ‘Do I think we’re one of the best 64 teams in the country?’ I certainly feel that way,” he said. “We’re tied for eighth place in the SEC. We lost this game, obviously. I hope the whole selection doesn’t come down to how you did in one game against an opponent.

“The selection committee has a tough job to do, I know that. I think our RPI speaks for itself. We played arguably the toughest or one of the top two or three toughest schedules in the country. We’ve done a lot of good things, and I would hope that we get invited to the Big Dance, but I don’t get a vote.”

Right now, LSU is likely still in position to get a tournament bid. Its RPI and strength of schedule, as well as winning road record, will speak volumes. But it’s status as the ninth-best team in the SEC is weighing it down and will likely keep it close to the cut line throughout the selection process. As conference tournaments around the country heat up and an upset or two turns a one-bid league into a two-bid league, LSU will feel its stomach turn a little more.

Those upsets have already started. In the game in Hoover right before LSU’s loss, Alabama (30-22, 12-17) upset South Carolina. The Crimson Tide still have work to do, in part because they lost to the Tigers, but they will get the chance to do it over the next few days. In the American Athletic Conference, Memphis upset top-seeded East Carolina, pushing the Pirates into the losers’ bracket. In the ACC, Louisville and Pittsburgh both won important games Tuesday.

It’s not a position LSU is used to being in. The Tigers haven’t missed the NCAA Tournament since 2011 and have never been knocked out of the SEC Tournament so early.

All LSU can do is wait, practice and watch. As Mainieri said Tuesday, it’s not an enviable position.

“We’re just going to be at the mercy of the selection committee, and we’ll hope (we did enough),” he said. “I believe we did, but like I said, I don’t know. It’s not a good position to be in, I can tell you that. I’ve been in this position before, and it’s not a lot of fun to be at the mercy of the selection committee.”