See here's the thing......if we win out, we can get a first round bye.
If we don't, we get a first round game...but that means we lost a game.
I'd rather win out and get a first round bye. The committee considers your record in the last month more strongly than your early record.
The entry of Stokes is also a variable.
We don't necessarily get a bye if we win out. We could finish as high as 2nd and as low as 6th, depending on what else happens. A 5 or 6 seed gives us a relatively easy 1st round game, and a winnable 2nd rounder. A 2 or 3 wouldn't be too bad- we'd miss out on the first round game, but we'd land on the other side of the bracket from UK, so we could still win 2. What we don't want is a 4- in that case, we're probably playing a 5, likely Bama, in our first game, and UK in the next. Those are the two teams I most
don't want to see.