Wednesday, December 18, 2013

TAT: Arkansas Basketball A-Z - Expectations


This article originally appeared on December 18, 2013 on The Arkansas Traveler website, uatrav.com.

It has been six seasons since Arkansas made the NCAA tournament, but many fans expect that streak to end this year.
However, before the season, most publications did not have the Razorbacks in the 68-team field.
Whether or not the Razorbacks make the tournament this season could come down to how the Southeastern Conference does as a whole.
In NBCSports.com’s and USA Today’s preseason projections, four SEC teams will make the tournament, while ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has five SEC teams making the field, with two teams part of the “Last Four In.”
A little over a month into the season, the SEC has not helped its case. The conference started 0-10 against top 25 teams and are currently 3-14 against ranked opponents.
Despite this poor nonconference performance, Lunardi’s most recent bracketology on ESPN.com, released Monday, has six SEC teams in the tournament, including Arkansas.
The Razorbacks are an 11-seed, according to Lunardi’s projections.
Another thing that will factor into Arkansas’ bubble argument is its performance on the road. Last season, the Razorbacks won only one SEC game on the road and finished the season with 19 wins.
If Arkansas wins more road games and the SEC gets six teams in the tournament, the Razorbacks could make the NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2007-08 season.

This is the fifth of a series of short articles about the Arkansas basketball team. Each day leading up to SEC play, I will post an entry about something basketball related that starts with the next letter of the alphabet. Here are links to the previous entries, as well as the dates for the next five…
F – Dec. 19
G – Dec. 20
H – Dec. 21
I – Dec. 22
J – Dec. 23

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