Kentucky basketball earns a bye. Cats won’t have to play on first day of SEC Tournament

Kentucky basketball earns a bye. Cats won’t have to play on first day of SEC Tournament

The Kentucky Wildcats won’t have to play on the first day of the SEC Tournament in Nashville. While the seed placement for Mark Pope’s team is far from settled going into the final weekend of the college basketball regular season, the results of the midweek games have ensured that the Cats will not have to play on Wednesday of conference tournament week.

The clincher came with Ole Miss’ 78-76 victory over No. 4-ranked Tennessee on Wednesday night in Oxford, a win that pushed the Rebels to 10-7 in the conference and eliminated the only scenario that would have put Kentucky in one of the slots on the opening day of the SEC Tournament. If UK, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt would have all tied at 9-9 in the league standings, the various tiebreakers would have bumped the Cats down to the 9 seed in the tournament. With the addition of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC this season — pushing the league to 16 teams — the reconfigured bracket has the 9 through 16 seeds all playing their first tournament games Wednesday, with the 5 through 8 seeds making their postseason debuts Thursday and the 1 through 4 seeds earning a “double bye” into the Friday quarterfinals.

There is now no scenario in which the Wildcats could drop below the 8 seed. Going into Saturday’s games, Kentucky is all alone in eighth place at 9-8 in the SEC standings, one game behind Missouri, Ole Miss and Texas A&M (all at 10-7) and one game ahead of Mississippi State and Vanderbilt (both at 8-9). Even if UK loses at No. 15 Mizzou on Saturday — and Mississippi State and Vandy both win their final regular-season games — the Cats would win the three-team tiebreaker. They would also hold head-to-head tiebreakers over either Mississippi State or Vanderbilt

Kentucky can still move up from the 8 seed, but the Cats would need to beat Missouri on Saturday to do so. If UK loses that game, it will be locked into the 8 seed, which will play its first SEC Tournament game against either the 9 seed (still up in the air) or the 16 seed (South Carolina) at 1 p.m. ET Thursday at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The winner of the 8-9/16 game would also have to face No. 1-ranked Auburn the following day. Kentucky will play at Missouri at noon EST Saturday on ESPN.