-Auburn's arena makes for a great atmosphere, and there's literally not a bad seat in the house (I know that's a cliche, but it's true in this case). But they really built that place on the cheap. Had to climb about 6 flights of stairs to get up to the 200 level concourse- how does any major sports venue built in the last 20 years not have escalators? And the bathroom situation is woefully inadequate, at least upstairs. I counted 3 bathrooms to serve the entire 200 level, and each of them only had 2 toilets and 2 urinals. Ridiculous.
-AU fans, as usual, were great. I was cheering for UT pretty vociferously (but no trash talk or anything), and never heard a foul word from anyone sitting around me. There aren't many places in the SEC that I can say the same for.
-How are we the only SEC school that still hasn't figured out how to manage gameday parking and traffic? At AU, parking was free right across the street from the arena. Also, the game ended shortly after 2. I was home (40 miles away) by 3.
-If you haven't seen Jordan Bone play in person, you can't appreciate just how quick he is. TV doesn't do it justice. I thought Tony Harris was the quickest player we've ever had, but Bone leaves him in the dust. If there's a quicker player in America, I'd like to know who it is.
-Our perimeter defense is heavily reliant on Kyle Alexander being in the game. With him protecting the rim, it allows our guards to cheat a bit toward the 3 point line. We held them to a relatively low percentage from there in the first half, when Kyle played a lot (Which is unusual- he's usually on the bench with 2 fouls by the 10 minute mark). He sat more in the 2nd half (and I'm not sure why), and they torched us.
-I didn't realize the huge gaffe by the refs until I got home. Apparently they ruled an AU tip-in a 3? And it was arguably offensive goaltending? I knew I had the score wrong down the stretch (I'm not constantly staring at the scoreboard at a game), but I figured my math was just off. It's pretty clear on replay- the refs blew this one big time. I won't say it cost us the game, but it sure didn't help. The SEC has a serious problem, and I hope they realize it.
-But really, I don't think this loss hurts us much. All of our goals are still attainable, including a #1 seed. Granted, we'd have to win the SECT for that to happen (and history tells us that's very unlikely). But assuming we do, that would mean that we will have outlasted UK (if not beat them outright). And at least 2 of the 3 ACC contenders are guaranteed to lose next weekend.
-Speaking of the ACC, the media bias towards that league is beginning to border on sickening. It's looking more and more likely that Zion Williamson is done for the year. Without him, Duke has looked very beatable. Yet the bracketologists in major sports media treat their losses almost as if they don't count. They haven't budged from that 1 line. And that would be fine, except that UNC got huge credit and jumped up from a consensus 3 seed to a 1 seed immediately after beating a Zion-less Duke. You can't have it both ways.
-I think there's still a chance that LSU will withdraw from the the SECT, which would move us up to a 1 or 2 seed depending on how the tiebreakers with UK shake out. Keep an eye out the next couple days- that situation is still very fluid.
-Just gonna leave this here: 3 of our 4 losses this year have come to teams publicly implicated in the FBI probe. The other is coached by John Calipari. I'm just saying.
