Hog Calls

Saturday worth the losses for SEC

Kansas guard Devonte' Graham (4) and Kentucky guard Tyler Ulis (3) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lawrence, Kan., Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)
Kansas guard Devonte' Graham (4) and Kentucky guard Tyler Ulis (3) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lawrence, Kan., Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

FAYETTEVILLE -- Winning three out of 10 leaves little to brag about.

Yet for SEC basketball, the manner of its 3-7 vs. the Big 12 in Saturday's SEC/Big 12 Challenge is nothing to sulk about.

In fact, it's a positive. Especially positive given that outside Kentucky, the SEC seems almost as nationally ignored in men's basketball as it is nationally esteemed in football.

Just the reverse of the Big 12. Oklahoma carries the Big 12 football water almost alone with Texas on hard times and private schools TCU and Baylor seldom netting national attention equivalent to their success.

But Big 12 basketball is deemed big time.

No. 7 Kansas represents the Big 12's Kentucky equivalent, the perpetually premier basketball blue blood.

Oklahoma perches as No. 1 on the AP poll with Big 12 members Iowa State, West Virginia and Baylor ranked 13th through 15th.

So Arkansas defeating Texas Tech in overtime and especially Florida routing then-No. 9 West Virginia, with SEC leader Texas A&M rebounding from its Arkansas loss to beat Iowa State, were big for the SEC.

Even in defeat, attention netted from Kentucky taking Kansas to overtime in Lawrence, Kan., and LSU taking No. 1 Oklahoma to the wire 77-75 in Baton Rouge enhanced the image of a league nationally deemed basketball inferior.

It wasn't always so.

In the 1990s -- a decade with Nolan Richardson's Arkansas Razorbacks the 1994 national champions and 1995 national runners-up, Kentucky winning two national titles, Florida and Mississippi State making one Final Four, Shaquille O'Neal starring for LSU, and Alabama advancing boatloads to the NBA -- the SEC rode high on the hoops.

But post-1996, Arkansas' last Sweet Sixteen team, it seemed SEC basketball mostly dwindled to just Kentucky and those other guys.

That didn't change much even with former Florida Coach Billy Donovan's great Gators winning the 2006 and 2007 national championships.

Florida got its due those years, but the SEC didn't. Not like the ACC basking in a Duke or North Carolina national championship or the Big East in its day when a Connecticut, Georgetown or Syracuse reigned nationally.

Always at the apex in football promotion, the SEC seldom seems so enthusiastically inclined to promote its prowess on the hardwood.

Starting the SEC/Big 12 Challenge two seasons ago was a positive step, but it was diluted with games scattered on different November and December dates.

This season, the leagues interrupted their conference campaigns to consolidate the challenge.

So from Saturday noon to night, with college football done and Super Bowl week not yet begun, the SEC and Big 12 dominated ESPN networks, just as Arkansas Coach Mike Anderson had hoped.

"I thought it worked out well for both parties," Anderson, an avid proponent of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge scheduling shift, said. "You think of the Big 12 and the SEC, and the whole day was basketball. It worked for us."

Sports on 02/03/2016

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