The 2011 basketball season isn't over yet, for the University of Alabama or the Southeastern Conference, but the 2012 season already seems to be coalescing into promising shape.
The Crimson Tide is in New York, waiting on Tuesday night's NIT semifinal against Colorado.
They might have been watching as, a few miles across the Hudson, their Southeastern Conference counterparts, the Kentucky Wildcats, put the finishing touches on the first NCAA Final Four run for an SEC team since Florida (with assistant coach Anthony Grant on its staff) won a second consecutive title in 2007.
Prior to that, Grant had to at least sneak a peek as the school that employed him previously, Virginia Commonwealth, knocked off No. 1 seed Kansas to complete its own Cinderella run into the Final Four.
Credit goes to the current coach, Shaka Smart, but Grant did recruit many of the key players on the VCU roster. No doubt Grant is proud of his former players, and their achievement does further validate his eye for talent and his grasp of how to build a roster, the same thing he is in the process of doing at UA.
The fact the SEC will be represented in the Final Four, something only one other "major" conference (the Big East) can claim, does not mean the SEC was the best conference this year.
But Kentucky did lose six SEC games this season, and while it is fair to point out the Wildcats got appreciably better as the year went along, so did a couple of the teams that beat them.
And the league should get better next season. Mike Anderson will get results at Arkansas, if he keeps a Top 10 recruiting class signed by John Pelphrey glued together. I suspect he will.
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