SEC Conference Tournament Preview & Betting Guide: Top-Seeded Alabama a Shaky Favorite in Nashville

The SEC has storylines everywhere you look, and they will all culminate in Nashville this week as the SEC Tournament gets set for tip-off. To prepare you for the SEC Tournament, we will discuss the favorite, a dark horse, and the best bet we think could go dancing on the league’s behalf.SEC Tournament Dates & Sites

• Dates: March 8-12
• Location: Bridgestone Arena | Nashville, TN
• Championship Game: Sunday, March 12, 1:00 p.m. | ESPN

It’s been an eventful season for the Crimson Tide, to say the least, with highs and lows both on and off the floor. The team feels like a near lock to be a number one seed at the NCAA Tournament, but the drama continues to surround Brandon Miller’s involvement in a homicide committed by a former teammate back in January.

It’s hard to say if it’s caused Alabama’s most recent funk, but it’s apparent that they have struggled over the past two weeks. The Tide have gone to overtime against Auburn and SEC cellar-dweller South Carolina and fell to Texas A&M in their regular-season finale.

The team’s talent and ceiling are undeniable, but it’s fair to say they are not playing their best basketball heading into the madness.

Texas A&M is trending in the exact opposite direction. It seems head coach Buzz Williams and the Aggies have found a rhythm with eight wins in nine games and an impressive 15-3 record in the vaunted SEC this year. Since the start of February, A&M has ranked sixth among all Division I teams in barttorvik.com‘s T-Rank, the best in the SEC.

They excel at two things that stifle nearly every opponent: offensive rebounding and getting to the charity stripe. The Aggies rank in the top ten in both metrics, and it generates an abundance of points from missed shots. A missed field goal is suddenly a foul or a second-chance bucket with both free throws and offensive rebounds as an outlet for scoring.

It creates a wide margin of error for the team to have a poor shooting night and still make up for it at the line or on the glass.

It’s no hyperbole to say this is one of the best teams in the nation right now, and getting them at +600 with a double-bye into the quarterfinals feels like a fantastic bet. Nobody is playing as well as the Aggies right now in the entire conference, and they should be priced much closer to the trio of Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Back A&M to get it done this weekend.

Conference Previews on SportsGrid: ACC | Big East | Big 12 | Pac-12