The SEC Tournament
The winner gets the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Basketball has always been a tournament game. The SEC provides you another chance to go to the NCAA if you are a winner. Being ready physically is important, rested, improved. excited about a new opportunity and eager to play instead of being glad that the season is coming to a close. But a huge factor in the SEC tournament is how you are as a team mentality. Can you be ready to beat a team that you have already beaten once or twice? That is being mentality ready.
As coaches, I talked about a new season, championship is there for us to take. You might add a wrinkle or two to your offence knowing that you had been scouted to death. This was generally done a couple of weeks before the tournament. Conveying to our team that we are going to be different than the other 11 schools. During our practice time the day before the tournament, we are going to scrimage for 30 minutes while the other teams are going to have a shoot around. Our preparation is different because we added new wringles our opponent had not seen.
You have to beat the teams that you are supposed to beat regardless of what has happened in your past games and in some way be prepared to beat the teams that are as good or better than you. I always tried to arrive at the SEC tournament as late as possible because if you are successful, it is a long week. We were able to get in the finals of the SEC tournament 9 out of 12 years and that was because of some very good players and a great staff.
