Great start. 2 road wins. Will likely be favored by 2.5 to 3 over UF at home 1/18. 4 great first halfs.
Settled starting lineup and rotation. Suffocating D and good rebounding. Starting to get balanced scoring.

I think USC and LSU will end up at the bottom of the SEC with Mizzou and UF in the middle. So, will be interesting to see how we do vs. the better teams.....Bama, UT, Auburn.....maybe UK, Arky(despite their start),
GA and Vandy, MSU. OM appears to be a bottom level too. Nice to have Bama and UT at home later in the season.

Right now Sagarin has us at 36 with a 140 sos. Ken Pom at 47 with a 125 sos. Our SOS will get better with the games ahead.

10 SEC wins looks very doable. 12-13 wins is likely what is needed to not worry too much about Lunardi. Should be safe to finish at least 5th in the SEC....6th might still work for an NCAA bid.

Ultimately we've beat up on the bad teams, but the only way this season still had a prayer was for us to beat up on the bad/mediocre teams.

Thankful at least the conf schedule setup nicely for us to gain some confidence/hope.

We definitely need 12 or more SEC wins going into SECT. Schedule is backloaded. Couldn't ask for a better start. Would be really nice to have a sweep of UF in our back pocket.

It's maddening in retrospect how poorly we played for a month

UF is still ahead of us on kenpom

UF 44 Ags 47 in Ken Pom index////home court only reason Ags will be a slight favorite.

But the point of all this is … we have to beat Fla at home and move past them.

We are gonna get at least 13 conference games before SEC tournament. And then we will be SEC tournament champs.

Gonna go deep in the tournament. Mark my words.

Gosh, I hope this ages well.

Adam87inSA said:

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We definitely need 12 or more SEC wins going into SECT. Schedule is backloaded. Couldn't ask for a better start. Would be really nice to have a sweep of UF in our back pocket.

It's maddening in retrospect how poorly we played for a month

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Hell, it's maddening that even though we played so poorly in non-conference had we just re-grouped and stopped ****ing around long enough to beat WOFFORD at HOME, then we'd actually be in pretty decent shape.

That's what makes loving Buzz as a coach so tough. The deep-dive analytics and "this game is worth +1, this game is worth -1" and the "boot camp" and all of it is fine -- even endearing -- when you aren't bringing your team in unprepared for very winnable games.

Wofford and Boise were just brutal showings.

At least Boise has a net in the top 30...

Yep. Full agree.

Yeah Boise is actually good but we weren't even really competitive in that game and we knew going in it how important it was.

Colorado showing was worse than any except Wofford

Yeah, but any early season tournament games are weird. I generally count those as like half games on your resume. It's why losing to Murray State isn't as bad as it would be otherwise.

I think we'll be favored by more than 3 over Florida

I think the team understands now what they are up against to get in the NCAA tournament.
I don't think they will over look any remaining games they should win.
I think Boots, Dexter and Andre want in the Big Dance as their college careers are winding down
and will provide leadership to hopefully get there!
Hopefully they know we need some wins in the 4 big games with UT x1 Bama x1 and Auburn x2
and at UK....3 wins in those 5 would be huge! 3 are at Reed. Should offset the Wofford debacle to some extent.

Vegas was way off on the points for our wins over lsu, mizzou and usc, but the power rankings
show a close game. We need the students to fill up their sections for the UF game!

I know it was last year, but Diarra hit the long jumper in OT to beat the gators in the SEC tournament.
We have had close games recently with UF. They have talent. Hopefully, we hold Castleton below his average and the crowd rides his whiney ass the whole game.

There's no team in the SEC that we can expect to just out-talent by a significant margin, so there's few games where I'd be comfortable saying "oh we should win this one easily".

It's going to take 12 conference wins to make the tourney imo sans winning the SEC tourney. It's well within the realm of the possible but by no means probable. I only see 4 -5 games that we'd likely be the favorite if the games were played right now. Ags are playing great right now. I guess it just took this long to get the defense tweaked but it's smothering level right now.

These past 4 games feels a bit like Buzz's good Va Tech teams to me.

Adam87inSA said:

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We definitely need 12 or more SEC wins going into SECT. Schedule is backloaded. Couldn't ask for a better start. Would be really nice to have a sweep of UF in our back pocket.

It's maddening in retrospect how poorly we played for a month

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Buzz didn't have the starting lineup or rotation set. Now he does and everyone understands their role.

halfastros81 said:

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It's going to take 12 conference wins to make the tourney imo sans winning the SEC tourney. It's well within the realm of the possible but by no means probable. I only see 4 -5 games that we'd likely be the favorite if the games were played right now. Ags are playing great right now. I guess it just took this long to get the defense tweaked but it's smothering level right now.

These past 4 games feels a bit like Buzz's good Va Tech teams to me.

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According to ESPN's "win predictor" as of today (changes w new results of course) the Ags are favored in 7 games, underdogs in 6 games, and the @ Mizzou game is an exact 50/50 toss up.
71.4% vs UF
24.5% at UK
30.3% at Aub
85.3% vs Vandy
28.6% at Arky
84.6% vs UGA
63.4% vs Aub
61.5% at LSU
58.8% vs Arky
50.0% at Mizzou
29.8% vs UT
42.5% at State
58.8% at OM
39.8% vs Bama

Proposition Joe said:

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Ultimately we've beat up on the bad teams, but the only way this season still had a prayer was for us to beat up on the bad/mediocre teams.

Thankful at least the conf schedule setup nicely for us to gain some confidence/hope.

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Schedule definitely worked in our favor. Good to see we've been able to capitalize. I applaud Buzz for navigating the turbulent waters.

I stand corrected . Those odds to beat Vandy, Georgia and perhaps Mizzou look shaky to me. The other side of that is the odds to win some of the other games look disproportionately low

The spread between likelihood to win at home vs the road also look weird for example 30% chance to win at Aub vs 63 % to win against the same team at home? Ditto with the hogs , less than 30% chance on the road vs 59% at home. I guess that's a testament to how little a spread they see in the actual teams when it swings so much home vs road.

Be interesting to know how EsipN comes up with their win predictor?
Those 85% and 84% predictions vs Vandy and GA scare me.....I know we are at home for those 2 games,
but Vandy has that 7 ft. Robbins and a lot of 3 ball shooters. GA off to a good start and Mike White is a good coach despite his time at UF.

I don't trust it. Vandy will be tough.

There is a huge difference between home and road for most middling teams

cs69ag said:

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Be interesting to know how EsipN comes up with their win predictor?
Those 85% and 84% predictions vs Vandy and GA scare me.....I know we are at home for those 2 games,
but Vandy has that 7 ft. Robbins and a lot of 3 ball shooters. GA off to a good start and Mike White is a good coach despite his time at UF.

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UGA just broke a huge double digit SEC road losing streak by squeaking out a comeback win at OM to make them 0-5

cs69ag said:

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Be interesting to know how EsipN comes up with their win predictor?
Those 85% and 84% predictions vs Vandy and GA scare me.....I know we are at home for those 2 games,
but Vandy has that 7 ft. Robbins and a lot of 3 ball shooters. GA off to a good start and Mike White is a good coach despite his time at UF.

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85% is roughly -9.5 to -10 pt favorites.

We were just 5pt favorites at home to Missouri and LSU. We would have been -13/-14 at home vs South Carolina.

Whether right or wrong, Vegas hasn't ever thought we were as bad as our performance indicated.

What Vandy did at home vs Arky was impressive.

Then again, Cocky led wire to wire at Rupp to beat the Cats on Tue. On one less day's rest, the Ags travelled to USCe and slapped them around like a fiance that sassed back to a Sip coach.

Quick ups and downs happen.

Adam87inSA said:

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halfastros81 said:

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It's going to take 12 conference wins to make the tourney imo sans winning the SEC tourney. It's well within the realm of the possible but by no means probable. I only see 4 -5 games that we'd likely be the favorite if the games were played right now. Ags are playing great right now. I guess it just took this long to get the defense tweaked but it's smothering level right now.

These past 4 games feels a bit like Buzz's good Va Tech teams to me.

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According to ESPN's "win predictor" as of today (changes w new results of course) the Ags are favored in 7 games, underdogs in 6 games, and the @ Mizzou game is an exact 50/50 toss up.
71.4% vs UF
24.5% at UK
30.3% at Aub
85.3% vs Vandy
28.6% at Arky
84.6% vs UGA
63.4% vs Aub
61.5% at LSU
58.8% vs Arky
50.0% at Mizzou
29.8% vs UT
42.5% at State
58.8% at OM
39.8% vs Bama

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I know that it is looking way ahead but I like that their predictor gives us a decent chance to win against Alabama on the final game of the season on our home court.

One game at a time... but if we maintain current level of intensity on defense AND multiple players - including those coming off the bench - continue to shoot well - that game could be for the SEC regular season conference championship.

Florida and Mizzou could both end up on the bubble as well. Sweeping Florida and hopefully sweeping Mizzou would be huge and give us an obvious leg up over both come selection Sunday if all of us have a similar NET ranking.

I'll be pretty surprised if either of them are close

If we have a chance at a conference championship that day I'll buy a keg and donuts and get out there at 7 AM and invite this entire board.

Loser mentality to try to project how many games we can lose and still get into the tourney.

Just win the next game. And the next. And the next. Repeat until end of season.

Hell yeah brother, undefeated or GTFO. Shut down the board.