Show Me My Opponent, 2022-23: South Carolina (#1)

right to the ways and the rules of the world

Tennessee completed their first-week sweep of the Mississippis on Wednesday with a demolition of everything Mississippi State stood for. Compared to the other top four teams in the SEC in KenPom - Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky - Tennessee’s got a little bit of a light run-up to the meat of SEC play. Tennessee’s first four SEC games feature no one ranked higher than 46th in KenPom; Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky all play each other at least once in the first four games.

This is the lightest part of the light run-up, in theory. South Carolina ranks 200th on KenPom at the time of writing. No other SEC team ranks outside the top 100. They’ve fallen an astounding 125 spots on the site since the start of the year and are 1-7 against Quadrants 1-3.

I like head coach Lamont Paris and think he’ll turn it around there eventually, but this is a bad jump-shooting team that doesn’t get many easy buckets and doesn’t really seem to have any strengths other than rebounding. Recommended If You Like: Kim Anderson-era Missouri? Tony Barbee-era Auburn? This is currently the rare Quad 4 road conference game so I’m digging deep here.

BELOW THE LINE ($): NOT A SINGLE REFERENCE to the cursed sport of “college foot ball” or amateur handegg