When Kentucky and Kent State started the first NCAA regional game in Gary, Ind., South Carolina and Manhattan were still waiting for Clemson and Coastal Carolina to finish their game so that the Gamecocks and the Jaspers could get underway. Florida was three hours away from taking the field against Bethune-Cookman; it would be four hours before LSU and Louisiana-Monroe would see the first pitch.

By the time Kentucky and Kent State were done, South Carolina had beaten Jasper in game that featured a one hour and 24 minute weather delay. Florida had beaten Bethune-Cookman on Jonathon Crawford's no-hitter. LSU and ULM were just wrapping up a Tigers win. And the Wildcats and the Flashes had just finished the second-longest game in NCAA tournament history, clocking in at 21 innings.

The bad news for the Wildcats is that it was a game that they lost, 7-6, making Kentucky one of two SEC teams that will start in the losers' bracket tomorrow. The teams combined for 38 hits in 154 at-bats. The Wildcats will play whoever wins the game between Valparaiso and Purdue, set to begin play around 11:30 p.m. ET -- or nearly three and a half hours after that game was to supposed to start.

The only other team to lose on Friday was Mississippi State, which was blanked by Samford, 5-0, to open the Tallahassee Regional. They face UAB on Saturday to see who goes home.

Florida was making history of its own, backing up Crawford's no hitter. It was the first postseason no-hitter for the Gators in more than 20 years. Crawford walked one and needed just 98 pitches to get through the entire game. He struck out five. And that historic game had the bonus of being a win for Florida. You would like both if you can have them, and much prefer the win if you can just choose one, an option Kentucky didn't have.

It turned out to not be so much a declaration from the SEC of what the schedule will be for the next dozen years, but an endorsement of the scheduling format for the 14-team conference. And -- surprise of all surprises -- the SEC is going with the scheduling format that everyone thought the SEC would go with.

Slive says SEC's 6-1-1 football model will be for 3 or 4 years, but could go longer. No chance of scheduling 10 years out

— Mark Long (@APMarkLong) June 1, 2012

Sorry, Les Miles. You and Florida are stuck with each other for at least a few more years. And as some had suggested, the SEC will shorten the rotation by having a different team take that second interdivision spot each season, rather than being a home-and-home.

A good guess would be that the three or four years model will give the SEC a chance to look at whether the nine-game schedules in other conferences will give teams from those conferences a leg up in the new playoff model. That takes the SEC two or three years into the playoff era -- assuming it actually gets started -- and gives them enough time to consider whether to add another interdivision team to the mix.

But the big news is that Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Auburn fans can rest easy. The traditional SEC rivalries are safe for now. And LSU will now presumably never contend for a national title again because the Tigers have to play a team that is 7-9 in the SEC over the last two seasons.

We've already been over Kentucky's list of losing streaks before on this site -- most recently earlier this week -- so there's no need to rehash it in much detail. Suffice it to say that Florida remains the only team of the major streaks in recent years -- Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee -- that the Wildcats haven't been able to break. So it's time to find some new material.

Or maybe not, entirely. Because Florida is one of many games where Kentucky is probably going to have to be content just to gain ground rather than turn a loss into a win. Meanwhile, Louisville is looking stronger than ever, there's no game against Ole Miss on this year's schedule, and Kentucky would have to win in Knoxville this year if it wants to start a winning streak against Tennessee.

But there is going to be pressure on Kentucky to win this year. Some fans are already beginning to grumble about Joker Phillips' inability to replicate the success Rich Brooks had in Lexington, even if they're not quite ready yet to show their new head coach the door. Even if a subpar 2012 isn't enough to get Phillips fired, it will almost certainly be enough to increase his seat's temperature to the point where it's suitable for cooking eggs.

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Can Ole Miss win a conference game this year? Because that's the tangible sign of progress that I think Hugh Freeze can deliver. And I think they can win a conference game, I almost think they should win a conference game -- but I'm having a hard time thinking of which one it will be.

Go ahead and take the trips to Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge off the board. Barring thermonuclear attack, it's unlikely that either Alabama or LSU will be in bad enough disrepair to lose to Ole Miss at home. (This is not just a dig at Ole Miss; the only reason I'm sure one of them will lose a game at home this year is that they play each other.) Trips to Arkansas and Georgia, while less imposing than games against both half of last year's national championship game, also don't look promising.

Mississippi State? It's possible, and the Rebels' flat performance in that game last year might have been the team giving up after a long and deflating season. Vanderbilt? Anyone who watches the site knows I'm high on what James Franklin is doing in Vanderbilt. Sure, it's possible, but I just don't see it happening this year. Auburn? Meh. I don't know what to think of the Tigers, but I do know I've made the mistake of underestimating them for several years running, and I'm trying to get off that train.

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NCAA TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

12 p.m. ET
Tallahassee Regional: Samford vs. Mississippi State, ESPN3

1:35 p.m. ET
College Station Regional: Ole Miss vs. TCU, ESPN3

2 p.m. ET
Raleigh Regional: UNC-Wilmington vs. Vanderbilt
Houston Regional: Sam Houston State vs. Arkansas, ESPN3

4 p.m. ET
Columbia Regional: Manhattan vs. South Carolina, ESPNU
Gary Regional: Kent State vs. Kentucky

7 p.m. ET
Gainesville Regional: Bethune-Cookman vs. Florida, ESPN3

8 p.m. ET
Baton Rouge Regional: La.-Monroe vs. LSU

SEC SPRING MEETINGS

Posturing or collapse
The SEC has become the first league that I can think to categorically say take it or leave it when it comes to the conference's preference on the playoff format -- in this case, the four "best" teams. Which could just be posturing by Florida president Bernie Machen or could be the beginning of very real trouble for the playoff discussions.

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It's not mean to wonder how much Ole Miss is going to, pardon the pun, miss any of the players that won't be back this season. It's not that those players weren't good, at least relative to the other players who were taking the field in Oxford; it's that there just aren't that many of them. Seven of Ole Miss' top 10 players in terms of all-purpose yardage are back this season. So are seven of the Rebel Black Bears' top 10 tacklers. If you're looking for a reason for optimism -- and there aren't many -- the fact that the team isn't losing that much would be a good place to start.

BIGGEST RETURN | DB Charles Sawyer
The defense overall was nothing to write home about last year, but Sawyer was a bright spot. He intercepted four passes and returned them for a combined 101 yards while breaking up nine more. Sawyer also had 70 tackles, good enough for second on the team. The question this year will be the same as it was last season: How much will it matter if the rushing defense continues to give up 5.4 yards per carry and the other team doesn't need to pass that much?

BIGGEST LOSS | RB Brandon Bolden
If there is a player on offense whose absence Ole Miss is really going to notice, Bolden's a solid candidate. His 4.8 yards per carry was best among players with more than 30 attempts on the season; overall, he had 462 yards and four touchdowns, both of those numbers good for second on the team. Bolden also grabbed 14 passes for 147 yards and a touchdown -- which might not seem like a lot, but the yardage total was fifth-best for the Rebels. Bolden's production wasn't as high as it could have been due to injury; he played in 10 games and started in just four.

BREAKTHROUGH POSSIBILITY | QB Bo Wallace
Ole Miss needs a quarterback. When you're left thinking back to the halcyon days when Jevan Snead was chucking the pigskin down the field, you really need a quarterback. Enter Wallace, who has experience in Hugh Freeze's new passing attack and a relatively clear shot at the starting job. Barry Brunetti might be a solid dual-threat quarterback, but I'm not sure that Brunetti has the skill set that fits Freeze's offense. (Ole Miss attempted 313 passes last season; Arkansas State attempted 500 even.)

JUCO statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt, of course, but even if you do -- Wallace was very, very good for East Mississippi Community College. Wallace completed 336 of 502 attempts for 4,604 yards, 53 TDs -- no, that's not a typo -- and 14 interceptions. The yardage and touchdown totals are National Junior College Athletic Association records. The only way Ole Miss will be competitive on offense is if Wallace is able to put up comparable numbers in the SEC.

Kentucky's roster this year is an odd collection. There are a few players that played well last year, but no one who proved themselves to be a consistent game-changer. The quarterback position was a confused and often injured jumble in 2011, with Morgan Newton so banged up that he was still being held out of contact in spring practice. The defense only had a few truly awful games, but wasn't able to make up for the offensive incompetence in the others. So the two players listed here as key cogs in this season's Kentucky team will have to produce -- but some other players are going to have to step up to change the momentum.

BIGGEST RETURN | WR La'Rod King
On a team that didn't do much scoring -- the Wildcats averaged 15.8 points per game, even when the cupcakes are factored in -- King did the lion's share of the scoring that was done. His seven touchdowns were nearly a third of the team's total (22), more than half of its receiving scores (12), and more than twice as much as anyone else -- CoShik Williams was next with three. King's 14.9 yard per catch average was pretty healthy in a passing system that was anemic. If the Wildcats can stabilize and improve the quarterback position even a little, King might be able to do even more.

BIGGEST LOSS | LB Danny Trevathan
If there was a great player on Kentucky last year, the kind of player that any team in the league would have welcomed, it was Trevathan. The linebacker had 143 tackles on the season, 11.5 for loss and three of them sacks. He also picked off four passes and defended nine more, forced five fumbles and recovered a ball on the turf.

It doesn't make it easier that Winston Guy, who played a hybrid linebacker and safety position, has also moved on. Guy was second on the team with 120 tackles, 14 for loss and 1.5 sacks, along with two picks, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery. Essentially, Kentucky has to replace the two best defensive players on the team -- and both of them spent at least part of their time on the same unit.

BREAKTHROUGH POSSIBILITY | LB Avery Williamson
If there's some hope for the linebacking corps, it might come from Williamson, who will take over the middle spot being vacated by Ronnie Sneed, who had 71 tackles last season. Williamson had 49 tackles of his own, even though Sneed started every game at middle linebacker. If the Wildcats defense is going to keep the team in games, they need Williamson to play well.

SEC SPRING MEETINGS

So you're saying there's a chance
Really,. there's probably no way that the SEC goes to nine conference games. But at least the idea isn't dead yet, and at this point, it seems like almost anything could happen in the scheduling debate -- even if 6-1-1 is the leader right now.

The reemergence of nine conference games as a discussion point was a new development. Most SEC schools have said they are adamantly against going to nine. Alleva, who opposes nine games, said he doesn't think there are the votes to pass it.

Of course, Alleva's football coach is out there saying that there's a majority opposed to 6-1-1, so maybe their nose-counting skills leave something to be desired.

Did Dan Mullen get the best of Les Miles?
The Mississippi State head coach was not fond of Miles' knocking the Western Division Bulldogs' interdivision rivalry with Kentucky as part of LSU's crusade to jettison its annual game against Florida. Mullen found a not-too-subtle way of punctuating the point.

"I've been in this league for a while and I have a national championship ring from when my crossover games at the University of Florida that year were Auburn, Alabama and LSU," the former Gators offensive coordinator said. "Is that fair? But we still won a national title. I don't see how there’s any relevance to that. It all balances out."

Mullen also could have pointed out that Kentucky was one of the two teams that defeated LSU when Miles won his national title in 2007. But, remember, Miles only sees those as part of his team being undefeated in regulation.

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SEC SPRING MEETINGS

The only reason to have a playoff
SEC coaches are smartly deciding not to buy into any sort of conference champions only formula for the college football playoff. I really haven't heard of anyone outside of Jim Delany, John Swofford and whoever's running the Big East right now who thinks this is a good idea, but it keeps cropping up.

One of the few objections I've heard to what the SEC coaches said today is that they want the four "best" teams to play -- but, critics say, it's inherently difficult (if not impossible) to find out who the best four teams are. And while I'm sympathetic to that argument, the old playoff skeptic in me has one question: Then why in blue blazes have you people been pushing for a playoff?

If you want to have a true national championship playoff, try to figure out the best or most deserving four teams in the country are and have a playoff. That's the only advantage I see to having a playoff from an ethical or "fairness" perspective -- to try to determine who is No. 1 by some relatively significant standard. Otherwise, it's just a vapid exercise in further commercializing college football.

If you don't think the best or most deserving teams can truly be determined, let's go back to the old bowl system, have truly mythical national championship that recognizes the flaws in trying to figure out who is No. 1 in a sport as diverse as college football, and stop the kvetching. Because a national championship that's only an excuse to play more games is just as pointless as one that's voted on by coaches and the media.

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Looking at how well each team knows the conference's newest members

When it comes to Kentucky's history with Missouri and Texas A&M, there is one thing that's clear: This is just about as new to the Wildcats as anybody else. Just how new has been, at least in one respect, a matter of some debate.

First, the easy one. Texas A&M and Kentucky played a home and home in 1952 and 1953, with the Wildcats winning the 1952 game in College Station on a 10-7 score and the Aggies taking the Lexington edition of the series by a 7-6 score.

The final game must have impressed the Texas A&M brass nonetheless; before the 1954 season, they hired the Kentucky coach, a guy named Paul Bryant, who would suffer his worst season that year (1-9) before rebuilding the program and going on to have some success in College Station and a place called the University of Alabama. (In fact, that 1954 season is the only losing one that Bryant had in his head coaching career.)

Kentucky's history with Missouri is a bit more confusing. Everyone agrees that the Wildcats played the Tigers in 1965, beating them 7-0 in Columbia (MO), and in 1968, winning a 12-6 game in Lexington. But it's a much, much earlier game that brings up an interesting discrepancy in the official versions of each team's history.

According to Missouri's media guide [PDF], the two teams met a third time -- or a first time, really -- in 1904, a brutal 37-6 shellacking in Columbia that would make the Wildcats a still-solid 2-1 against the newcomers. It would also mean that only Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Arkansas have played the Tigers more often than Kentucky.

But there's no account of the game in the Kentucky media guide [PDF]. There is certainly an account of the 1904 Kentucky team, which went 9-1, it's only loss coming against Cincinnati. But there is no record of a trip to Columbia or a game with a 37-6 score.

It appears that Kentucky is right in this particular case. Mark Story explains.

According to The Kentucky Encyclopedia, the school we now call the University of Kentucky was known in 1904 as "State College." That was who was in Cincinnati losing on 10/22/1904.

The same day, Missouri was in fact putting a pounding on "Kentucky University." However, in 1904 the school then called "Kentucky U." is the one we know today as Transylvania University.

That means Alabama has also played Missouri more than Kentucky and the Wildcats are in a tie with Mississippi State and South Carolina for fifth in terms of the number of times each current SEC team has played the Tigers. And Kentucky is 2-0. The real third game between the two teams will take place Oct. 27 in Columbia.

So both teams are relatively new to Kentucky. And Kentucky -- at least the right one -- is new enough to Missouri officials to require a rewrite of the school's media guide.

Looking at how well each team knows the conference's newest members

It's not like Ole Miss was tearing up the SEC before Texas A&M and Missouri came around. After all, the Rebels were 10-30 against the SEC over the last five seasons, even when the Cotton Bowl seasons of 2008 and 2009 were taken into account. (Two winless seasons and a one-win season will offset a lot of things.)

Now, the SEC has added a pair of teams that have defeated Ole Miss nine of the 10 teams they've faced the Rebel Black Bears. Of course, history can be a tricky way to measure how well current teams will do against other current teams. But it's safe to say that if the past is any guide, the latest round of SEC expansion will be a cruel blow for Ole Miss.

By some measures, the Rebels have had more success against Missouri than against Texas A&M -- after all, at least Ole Miss has won one of the half-dozen games they've played with the Tigers. That would a 10-0 win against Missouri in Jackson back in 1974. (Four of Ole Miss' six games against the Tigers came between 1973 and 1979.)

Then again, by at least one other way of looking at it, Ole Miss should be glad that Missouri is headed to the SEC East. The combined score of the four Texas A&M wins against the Rebels over the year is 61-37 -- not great, but what do you expect when you lose all four games? On the other hand, Missouri has outscored Ole Miss by a combined margin of 167-63. That's an average margin of defeat of 17 points, even if you count the sole Rebels win in the average.

And many of the games haven't even been that close. The Tigers defeated Ole Miss 45-14 in 1978, 33-7 in 1979 and 34-7 in 2006. The only game between the Aggies and the Rebels decided by more than one score was the inaugural meeting between the two teams in 1911, when TAMU won 17-0.

Of course, Texas A&M is Ole Miss' more immediate concern. The Rebels won't face Missouri again until at least 2013 and will only meet them sporadically, especially if the SEC continues its stubborn resistance to a nine-game conference schedule.

The game against the Aggies is scheduled for Oct. 6 in Oxford -- right after Ole Miss visits Alabama in the SEC opener and before the set of Tigers from Auburn swings by. Hugh Freeze's introduction to the conference was always going to be a difficult one, but adding A&M might have made it a bit harder.

We're going to do more analysis of each of these regionals as the week moves on, but here's a top level view. The SEC has teams in half of the 16 regionals, which is basically simple math when you have a nation-leading eight berths in the tournament. Note: Two of the four Big 12 teams in the tournament this season will be in the SEC as of July 1, with Missouri heading to Tuscon. We'll get to Texas A&M in a few moments.

There's nothing particularly noteworthy about the opponents in this regional. There are a couple of automatic bids and a bubble team here. Of course, as No. 1 seeds, the Gators are supposed to have the easiest schedule in the field. The are paired with the Raleigh field, which also has an SEC team in it.

Sacred Heart is pretty bad -- an RPI of 214. But the top three teams in the regional are all in the Top 41. And we know about how hot Vanderbilt is right now. I would expect the Wolfpack and Commodores to be the teams to decide this one.

THIS REGIONAL IS FOR ALL THE BARBEQUE SAUCES! It's actually a fascinating clash of the different regions of South Carolina -- Upstate (Clemson), Midlands (South Carolina) and Lowcountry (Coastal Carolina). And, of course, Manhattan -- which is not actually in Manhattan at all, but the Bronx. At 139, it is also 100 spots in the RPI below Coastal Carolina, the next lowest-ranked team in the region. Winner is paired with the Charlottesville regional champion.

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We already know the regional hosts, but South Carolina's still on the edge as far as getting a national seed and Kentucky could end up as a No. 1 seed. We're also looking for news about where each team will go and which teams they'll be facing. This is your place to hold forth on the show that begins at noon ET on ESPNU if you want to. We'll also be posting which teams go where and commenting here and on Twitter. Follow along.

It's a new season in the SEC, and this one includes even more new faces than usual. For a league that seems to be constantly changing, that's saying something.

The most glaring new faces, of course, are the new teams joining the SEC this fall: Missouri and Texas A&M. Both teams bring some strengths and lucrative television markets to a conference that already has one of the highest profiles in college football. And both are likely to be somewhat surprised by their new conference-mates -- and might surprise a few of them in turn.

As always, there are some new players. Every team is looking to see if they have the next Tim Tebow or Marcus Lattimore on their rosters, hoping to find a player that can make an impact in their freshman year. And there are always the once-unheralded players who suddenly become playmakers.

And there are some new coaches. Hugh Freeze takes the reins at Ole Miss after the end of the Houston Nutt regime. John L. Smith steps into an Arkansas program turned upside down by an ill-advised motorcycle ride by former head coach Bobby Petrino. Kevin Sumlin not only has to get used to a new program in College Station, he will be the Aggies' coach in their inaugural SEC season.

The new storylines might be the most telling indicator of how much the conference has changed even before the new members are added. Can South Carolina make another run to Atlanta? How much longer does Derek Dooley have to turn things around at Tennessee? Is James Franklin really turning Vanderbilt into an up-and-comer?

The top of the SEC West seems to be settled: It's Alabama and LSU. Or LSU and Alabama. Which arrangement depends on who's being asked and when they're being asked it. The other five teams are just fighting for position.

But the most interesting thing to think about might be the fact that the conference has come full circle. When the SEC was founded in 1932, there were the 10 members we generally think of as the "original" members of the conference -- Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Vanderbilt -- as well as Sewanee, Georgia Tech and Tulane. With 14 members now, you can argue that the SEC is closer to its roots than it has been in a long time.

And the coaching questions and shifts in the balance of power have long been a part of life in the hypercompetitive SEC. And the beauty of college football is that there are new stars emerging every year, sparking all of the changes (aside from new conference members) that keep the sport entertaining.

Everything old, it seems, is new again.

So where is your team headed (or not headed) when the NCAA baseball tournament gets started this weekend? Here are some guesses based on what we've seen over the last couple of weeks and the regional hosts that were announced Sunday. I consulted the mock RPIs at Boyd's World as well as the brackets put together by Perfect Game and Baseball America to get a sense of what people who do this a lot more than I do are thinking. But I'm just an amateur bracketologist, so take this with a grain of salt. The real brackets are unveiled Monday at noon ET on ESPNU.

FLORIDA: NATIONAL SEED
RPI: 2
Florida has been one of the better teams in the country for most of the season, despite some uneven performances here and there. The Gators are going to be a national seed -- I don't think there's any real debate about that -- and probably a high one at that. That means that the Gainesville regional will feature one of the weaker fields and should give Florida a relatively easy run through the bracket. The one possible catch on that is if a hot team like Mississippi State or Vanderbilt gets into the field as a "low" No. 2 -- which would be a terrible draw, as I expect the Commodores and the Bulldogs to wreak havoc wherever they end up.

LSU: NATIONAL SEED
RPI: 8
Much of what I said about Florida could go here as well. The Tigers didn't finish well in the SEC tournament, but they played well enough before that to lock up the national seed despite being on "the bubble" under the pseudo-RPIs if you just go by the numbers. (The selection committee never just goes by the numbers, which makes bracketology more like Kremlinology than anything else.) But LSU is likely to end up more toward the middle or even the lower half of the national seeds, which means they could face a regional that will still be relatively easy -- but not a pushover.

SOUTH CAROLINA: LIKELY NATIONAL SEED
RPI: 12
Here's a case where the committee is likely to bypass the numbers and give the Gamecocks a national seed despite their being "outside" the Top 8. With the exception of the SEC tournament, South Carolina turned things on at the end of the year, and the Gamecocks are pretty clearly a different team than they were when they got off to a 1-5 start. Having some momentum is what's likely to get them over the finish line. It's not a sure thing, but most of the games that people I respect were watching with respect to South Carolina seemed to break the right way, so they'll get in and face a middling regional field as the last or next-to-last national seed.

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via PodKATT

Less than two weeks ago, Mississippi State lost to Central Arkansas -- a team ranked 140 in the NCAA's baseball RPI at the time. Despite having a good end to the season, the Western Division Bulldogs did not at that time look like a team that was about to sweep SEC front-runner Kentucky before running through the conference tournament in Hoover.

But that's exactly what Mississippi State finished doing Sunday, winning its fifth game in six days and wrapping up a 5-1 week in Hoover with a defeat of a Vanderbilt team that might have been the one squad in the country hotter than the Bulldogs. The 3-0 win in the championship game was typical of the way the Bulldogs won most of those games -- with a minimum of flash and a maximum of pitching and defense.

Ross Mitchell led the way on the pitching side, throwing five innings in relief while allowing just five hits -- even if he was pulled after ineffectively facing two batters in the ninth. Chris Stratton, a pitcher who was one of the main reasons Mississippi State was even in Hoover, got the final out with five pitches to strand runners on the corners.

It was a disappointing conclusion to an exciting run by Vanderbilt, which had entered the final regular-season weekend not knowing if it could even put together the winning record required for the NCAA tournament. Instead, after tearing off four straight wins in Hoover, the Commodores stand at 33-26 and might have moved as high as a No. 2 seed in whatever regional the selection committee puts them in.

As for Mississippi State, we know that the strong showing was not enough to get what most Bulldog fans were hoping for -- an opportunity to host an NCAA regional in Starkville. But they have the SEC tournament trophy and are among the teams you least want to face once the tournament gets underway. Neither of those is a bad consolation prize on its own. Together, they're the perfect way to cap off an unlikely season.

There was no surprise when the NCAA host sites for the baseball regionals were announced. We kind of new that Mississippi State's late rally probably wasn't enough, so it would probably be LSU, South Carolina, Florida and Kentu--

Wait a minute. Kentucky wasn't selected to host a regional this year?

No, five ACC teams had to get, including one that just barely cleared the 35-win mark and went 9-7 16-14 in the conference in the regular season. And a B1G team has to "host" to keep Jim Delany from getting angry, despite the fact that they really aren't going to host.

Due to stadium construction issues, the regional hosted by Purdue will be played at U.S. Steel Yard in Gary, Ind.

Because when I think college baseball, I think Gary, Indiana.

There's an argument to be made that this was a business decision by the NCAA; Kentucky can technically be the No. 1 seed at someone else's regional -- the stadium and other peripherals are taken into account by the selection committee. Still, if you're going to have a regional hosting system in place, merit ought to be the key consideration. By that measure, Kentucky's season is far and away worth hosting a region.

National seeds will be announced tomorrow. LSU and Florida are virtual locks and South Carolina is very, very likely to also get one, meaning they will have homefield advantage until Omaha. But after today's announcement, anything is possible.

No insult to Mississippi State intended -- but there was more action and excitement in the ninth inning of Vanderbilt's faceoff with Florida on Saturday than either the Bulldogs' win over Kentucky earlier in the day or anything else in the SEC tournament. It might just have been the most entertaining inning of baseball in the SEC this season.

Consider some of the highlights: The two teams doubled the number of runs in the game in the final inning. Vanderbilt pulled off a squeeze play that ended up with the batter safe at first. The Commodores ran the almost unheard-of triple steal, part of a half dozen bases they swiped -- in the ninth. Florida used a pair of RBI singles to bring home two more runs, and both of those were hit with two outs.

The 14 runs the two teams scored were the most of any game in the 2012 SEC tournament so far. The seven runs scored in the ninth inning alone amounted to more than the run total in nine of the 15 other games played this week.

Oh, and Vanderbilt's five-run rally helped set up a championship game between two of the hottest teams in the sport right now. That's all.

By contrast, Mississippi State's 2-1 win over the Wildcats was uneventful, bordering on boring. Four different pitchers combined to scatter nine hits over as many innings and keep Kentucky from breaking through after scoring once in the second. They struck out eight and walked just two.

Given the pair of runs scored by the Western Division Bulldogs in the second and third innings, that was enough. Corey Littrell pitched well enough over six innings to give Kentucky a chance to win if the Wildcats offense could get started, but it never really could.

So the teams that came into Hoover with all the momentum are headed to a final showdown Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2. Give Vanderbilt the edge in a game that should be entertaining -- even if it will be tough to top what happened in the final inning Saturday.

Winning a division turned out to be overrated in this year's SEC. After all, LSU and South Carolina entered the tournament in Hoover as undisputed champions of the SEC West and SEC East, respectively. And in the space of about seven hours Friday, each of them was booted from the tournament in its third game.

Which leaves us with this odd grouping of teams. In Florida and Kentucky, we've got a couple of teams who were in the running for the SEC East until the very end but just couldn't get the wins when they needed them. And in Mississippi State and Vanderbilt, we have a pair of teams that have played with their hair on fire over the last several weeks, putting one team on the bubble to host a regional and moving the other from iffy tournament prospect to a team playing for seeding.

This weekend, all four of those stories come together in two semifinals on Saturday and the final on Sunday. There are a lot of stories in this year's tournament, but only one of them is going to have a happy ending.

(4) Kentucky vs. (7) Mississippi State, 12 p.m. ET, CSS / ESPN 3
We meet again. The semifinal this weekend will mark the fifth time in 10 days that the Wildcats and the Bulldogs will face off with each other. At this point, it's almost getting personal. After all, it was Mississippi State that swept Kentucky out of the SEC East race and Kentucky that tried to cool of the Bulldogs by defeating them earlier in the tournament. The question for the Bulldogs is how much they have left after a thrilling win against LSU in the last round of the tournament. Kentucky, meanwhile, got its second bye of the tournament and will be ready to go for the noon game. But I'm hesitant to pick against whatever's working for Mississippi State, and the Bulldogs defeat their two-week rival again.

(5) Vanderbilt vs. (3) Florida, 30 minutes after Kentucky-Mississippi State, CSS / ESPN3
All week long, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State have jockeyed for the title of Cinderella in this tournament. Considering the long odds of Vanderbilt even getting a No. 5 seed just a couple of weeks before the regular season ended, being in the middle of the field still seems to qualify the Commodores as an underdog. And Vanderbilt has defeated every team they've faced in this tournament, starting with Georgia before moving to back-to-back wins against South Carolina and Florida. The Gators might be headed for a national seed, but they're not going to be the SEC tournament champions as well; Vanderbilt wins.

What is it about Hoover that makes South Carolina teams melt? Even over the last two seasons, when the Gamecocks were en route to back-to-back national titles, South Carolina could manage only a 1-4 record in Hoover. So it's no real surprise that the Gamecocks were knocked out of the SEC baseball tournament in three games.

What was notable about the game was the way that Florida leveled South Carolina. By the end of the third inning, the Gators were leading 4-0. They tacked on three more in the fifth inning and coasted to a comfortable 7-2 win. By the time the Gamecocks went to their third pitcher and finally stabilized things, the game was already over.

Florida had no such problems on the mound. Brian Johnson needed just 89 pitches for the complete game. Johnson gave up just five hits and struck out five while walking no one.

For Florida, the win means a national seed -- and with it, homefield advantage until Omaha -- is assured. Even before the Gators headed to Hoover, they were seen as a near lock for a national seed. Now, they only have to get through Vanderbilt and the winner of Kentucky-Mississippi State to claim an SEC tournament title as well.

The picture is more complicated for South Carolina. There's nothing particularly compelling about an SEC tournament resume that has a loss to Vanderbilt, a win against Auburn and another loss to Florida. Of course, the Gamecocks won in 2010 without a national seed and in 2011 with one. And, after all, it's not like there's a team in the running for the national seed that would force South Carolina to play in Hoover.

After a series of lineup shuffles so crazy that the coaches and umpires needed to consult more than once just to make sure they were all on the same page, it eventually came down to Matthew Britton. It came down to one of the least likely heroes on the Mississippi State bench. In baseball, it always does.

Britton was batting .149 when he stepped to the plate in the tenth inning, the game between the Bulldogs and LSU tied 3-3 with a runner on second and one out. And with a full count, he wrapped a single up the middle, past the glove of a diving Jacoby Jones, and launched Mississippi State into a single-elimination semifinal game against Kentucky.

Of course. The Wildcats and the Bulldogs can't seem to get rid of one another. Mississippi State swept Kentucky in a season-ending series, upending the Wildcats' hopes for at least a share of the SEC regular-season title. But Kentucky got the better of Mississippi State the first time they met in Hoover, knocking the Bulldogs into the losers' bracket and setting up Friday's game.

Even before Britton's heroics, it was quite a game. LSU began it with three unanswered runs in the first and second, and the almost magical Mississippi State run through the end of its season seemed on the edge of running off the rails, with the second loss in as many games ending their upstart bid to win in Hoover. But Jacob Lindgren settled down long enough to give the Bulldogs 4.2 innings, and the bullpen did their part by keeping the Tigers' bats relatively quiet the rest of the way.

But the Bulldogs also weren't hitting much -- going the first seven innings without scoring at all until breaking through in the eighth -- and LSU closer Nick Goody came onto the mound with a 3-1 lead in the ninth inning. A double, two singles, a strikeout and a hit batsman later, and the bases were loaded with one out when Luis Pollorena stepped up, three at-bats to his name. Pollorena hit the sacrifice fly that tied everything up.

So LSU, the regular-season SEC champions, will head home to prepare for what will likely be a national seed and a chance to add one more trophy to the program's storied tradition. In the end, the game probably doesn't change the trajectory of the Tigers' season that much.

For Mississippi State, it's another in an unlikely series of wins that could put the Bulldogs into the running to host a regional. That's a reason to keep winning. And so far, even if it takes a couple of times to get the lineup card right, that's what the Bulldogs have been doing.

Earlier on TSK: SEC Baseball Tournament 2012: LSU, South Carolina Bounce Back to Face Mississippi State, Florida
The last four-game day set up a final round of games before the single-elimination weekend matchups.

Official SEC Baseball Tournament page
This is the last time that we'll remind you -- largely because it's the last time Sprints is running before the tournament is over.

Housekeeping: The New SEC begins Monday
That's our preview series for 2012, beginning with two teams each week, one from the SEC East and one from the SEC West. (Otherwise, we'd have all the SEC East teams done in rather quick order, this being a countdown.) Your clue is that one of the teams did not join the Confederacy during the Civil War and another keeps facing controversies about the Confederacy.

THE NEWS

The people in South Carolina just have better manners than Floridians
it's more subtle than the statements that came out of Tallahassee a few weeks ago, but the message from Clemson board of trustees Chairman David Wilkins to the Big 12 is basically the same: Call us.

We are very interested in a football program that is excelling at a high level, and we would consider, as we should, any viable option from any conference if we received any. We have not received any.

Yet. Wilkins might not have said "yet," but it's pretty clear that it's an operative word in that sentence. The odds of Clemson and FSU bolting for the Big 12 are still probably less than 50 percent, but they seem to keep edging a bit higher every day.

Let's try not to read between the lines here
Mark Richt is still getting paid an awful lot of money -- $2.8 million -- to coach college football at Georgia. And his contract is getting extended after an ugly 2010 and a rough opening to the 2011 season before the Dawgs ended up winning the SEC East. But this still feels like a kind of half-hearted reward.

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Thursday marked the last four-game day of the SEC baseball tournament and the end of the road for at least two more teams, as we get into the part of the bracket where every day brings another round of eliminations. It also marked the day when a couple of teams found their offenses and might have revived their chances by doing so. And it set up a couple of fine games today, with the winners advancing to the single-elimination semifinals.

DAY THREE

PodKATT of ATVS via farm8.staticflickr.com, with permission and under Creative Commons

LSU 11, Ole Miss 2
The Tigers had a 4-2 even before they broke things open with a five-run eighth inning, which included six hits and an Ole Miss error as LSU batted around. Meanwhile, Bayou Bengals starter Kevin Gausman allowed seven hits but just two runs in seven innings of work, striking out seven batters. The Rebel Black Bears pitchers all shared in the loss, with each of the half-dozen players to take the mound giving up at least one run.

Kentucky 5, Mississippi State 1
The Wildcats finally figured out how to beat the Western Division Bulldogs. It started with a solid outing from Jared Grundy, who allowed just four hits and an earned run in six innings. Alex Phillips relieved him with three hitless innings that featured only two Bulldogs getting on base -- one through a walk and the other getting hit by a pitch. Mississippi State burned through several pitchers, but only Ross Mitchell, who threw just 14 pitches in 1.2 scoreless innings, seemed to be able to figure the Wildcats out for an extended period of time.

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Earlier on TSK: SEC Baseball Tournament 2012: South Carolina, LSU Lose Openers as Arkansas, Georgia Eliminated
It was a topsy-turvy day in the SEC baseball tournament, and there could be some more surprises in store.

Official SEC Baseball Tournament page
Your morning reminder.

THE NEWS

We might have unwittingly revived the Plus-One idea
Or perhaps wittingly. Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said he's pleased with the new SEC-Big 12ish deal because -- wait for it --

"I'd say before Friday that idea of a plus-one didn't have much traction, but I think the announcement on Friday's a game-changer," Scott said. "We're pretty far down the path on four-team playoff options, but given the very positive reaction to what the SEC and Big 12 have done, it's possible that (a plus-one) could get some traction."

Actually, when you look at it, things have kind of been headed in this direction for a few weeks. The kumbaya moment of the early BCS meetings have given way to squabbles over who plays what game and where it gets played. The idea of playing the semifinals within the bowl games seems to be taking the lead on the latter question, but there are still a ton of proposals being floated about the former.

So you can see the commissioners and company throwing up their metaphorical hands and getting rid of the meddlesome questions with a plus-one model that keeps the Rose Bowl, the Champions Bowl (please rename this) and maybe one or two other bowls alive as part of the framework.

Which is kind of like the BCS, when you think about it: Not what most fans want, but a lot better than what we used to get.

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The second day of the SEC tournament brought us a slate of close games -- one of the closest rounds in the history of the event -- that still had its share of surprises. Both of the top seeds went down and two teams, as scheduled, went home. We've got one more day of four straight games, and one with plenty of subplots running through it. A rematch of one of the pivotal series of the regular season is on tap, as is a collision of one of the SEC East front-runners and a resurgent would-be contender. It might be close, but the tournament in Hoover is rarely boring.

DAY TWO

Ole Miss 2, Arkansas 0
With apologies to the batters for the Rebel Black Bears, this game was all about the pitching. Mike Mayers and Brett Huber teamed up to scatter six hits across nine shutout innings while striking out 12. Arkansas was already unlikely to host a regional, and losing two straight against the teams from the state due east won't help any. Meanwhile, Ole Miss also gets to boost its stock by sticking around Hoover, but the Rebels are fighting for seeding at this point; there's not going to be any more baseball in Oxford this year.

Mississippi State 3, LSU 2
Starting Chris Stratton in this game ending up being a stroke of genius by John Cohen. He got through six solid innings that were good enough for him to leave with the lead, having struck out eight and allowed five hits. Meanwhile, LSU used seven pitchers in -- I don't know, an effort to burn out their entire bullpen for Thursday's elimination game. Actually, this was a plan. Because the first game in a double-elimination tournament is just like a usually meaningless midweek game during the regular season. The Western Division Bulldogs remain white hot.

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Looking back at Day One of the SEC tournament and forward to Day Two
Our wrap-up at the first round of the baseball playoff and a preview of what's coming up today.

Official SEC Baseball Tournament page
Just a reminder.

THE STORY THAT NEVER ENDS: CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT

The conference only has one group of Gamecocks, but no shortage of chickens
Will Muschamp is right about this:

"I like the every year playing LSU. I think that's good. I think that's good for the league," he said. "It's two national programs with the recent success we've both had."

But he and most of his colleagues are wrong about the eight-game schedule:

"I think there's enough good teams in our league right now," he said. "It doesn't really matter. There's going to be great matchups week in and week out in our league."

The opposition to a nine-game schedule, which has come from most of the SEC coaches and athletics directors, is one of the mind-numbingly short-sighted things the SEC has done since agreeing not to have a network in its last contract. The SEC is seen as the best conference in college football right now and can probably get by with an eight-game schedule.

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Day One of the SEC baseball tournament is in the books, and if there's one thing it taught us, it's that momentum is important. Both Mississippi State and Vanderbilt coasted to relatively easy wins against their opponents, while Georgia continued a late-season slump that might be endangering its NCAA stock and David Perno's job.

DAY ONE

Vanderbilt 4, Georgia 1
The most impressive effort of the night might have come from Brian Miller, who came in with one man on and one out in the sixth inning and pitched 3.2 innings of scoreless, one-hit relief. Three Vanderbilt players each got two hits while none of the other players even managed a single single -- or any other kind of hit. The three were Tony Kemp, Anthony Gomez and Spencer Navin. Alex Wood started strong for Georgia but ended up putting five men on base with two walks and three hit batsmen -- in 4.2 innings.

Florida 6, Auburn 1
Florida has now outscored Auburn 26-7 in the two teams' four games this season. The Gators moved to 3-1 in those meetings with a game that might even have been less competitive than the final score. Florida outhit Auburn 10-3. Jonathon Crawford struck out a career-high nine in 5.2 innings. The only good news for the Tigers in this game is that they don't have to face Florida for a couple of games -- if they get that far.

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THE STORY THAT NEVER ENDS: CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT

The SEC Network: The next step in the conference's conquest of the college football world
And good news for SEC basketball and baseball fans, too. (Probably as well as softball and volleyball, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here.) SportsBusiness Journal broke the story that we were all hoping for, with Sporting News kindly reprinting it.

There are several different paths the SEC could take on a channel. It could follow the Big Ten model, where the conference is a 49 percent owner of Big Ten Network with Fox and shares in its revenue. Or it could go the Pac-12 route, which owns all of its regional networks. Texas, on the other hand, sold its rights to ESPN for a fee and ESPN owns all of the Longhorn Network.

All of those models are believed to be in play for the SEC, but any channel couldn’t be launched until 2014 at the earliest, when ESPN gets back syndication rights it sublicensed to regional sports networks operated by Fox Sports and Comcast.

Of course, most of those rights likely have to do with football and men's basketball -- but it would be ridiculous to launch an SEC Network without either of those, so that's understandable. As are the reasons for CBS balking at paying too much more for SEC games.

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If you feel like the SEC baseball regular season just started yesterday -- well, you're not alone. But the SEC baseball tournament really does start tomorrow, with a slate of four games stretching from the time McDonald's stops serving breakfast to one hour after Whataburger starts serving it in the Eastern time zone. (Um -- breakfast for dinner.)

One of the benefits of the crazy end to the SEC regular season means we have some solid teams and intriguing storylines running through the first day. A couple of teams are trying to keep a late-season boom going while former front-runner Kentucky is trying to steady the ship. LSU and South Carolina get to sit this round out after winning the top two seeds, but they get to mix it up with some of the winners, and we're about to start several days of great SEC baseball.

(9) Ole Miss vs. (4) Kentucky, 10:30 a.m. ET
Both teams come in having lost four straight games -- one to a decided non-SEC underdog and the last three to a hot team from the conference. They're also more evenly matched than you might think from having seen the Wildcats and the Rebel Black Bears' respective seasons play out. In SEC games, Kentucky trails Ole Miss in OPS by .001 and holds an advantage of .40 runs in ERA. The Wildcats also come in disappointed by falling completely out of the SEC and SEC East championship races, but they're still probably good enough to take care of Ole Miss in what could be a closer-than-expected game.

(7) Mississippi State vs. (6) Arkansas, 30 minutes after Ole Miss-Kentucky
The Razorbacks were actually doing pretty well until running into South Carolina and Auburn(!), but rallied to sweep Tennessee, which vied all year with Alabama for the title of the worst SEC team. Mississippi State, as we noted on Saturday, finished up a torrid streak over the last few weeks of the season by sweeping Kentucky. Neither of these teams tear up the ball on offense, but both pitch pretty well. Last I heard, the Western Division Bulldogs were not going to start Chris Stratton in this game -- which is probably the right strategy in a double-elimination tournament -- but I still think that the hot streak continues and gives us a small upset in the first round.

(10) Auburn vs. (3) Florida, 5:30 p.m. ET
Why does this game sound so familiar? Oh, yeah, maybe it's because Florida went to Auburn and took two of three from the Tigers this past weekend. The Gators won their two games in that series by a combined 15 runs; Auburn eked out a one-run win in the series finale. Auburn has a great offense, leading the conference in SEC play with a .770 OPS, but Florida's pitching staff is good enough to keep the Tigers' bats in check for another game.

(8) Georgia vs. (5) Vanderbilt, 30 minutes after Auburn-Florida
Here's another case of hot versus cold. Georgia won one its last five SEC series and ended the season by losing two straight against Alabama. Vanderbilt, meanwhile, has been on the kind of roll that makes them immensely dangerous in a tournament like this. (Though, ironically, the last time the Commodores lost an SEC series was against Alabama.) In that time, Vanderbilt won series against Kentucky and at LSU in addition to the sweep of Ole Miss to end the year. Georgia's a sliver better on offense and Vanderbilt holds a slight edge on pitching, but this game seems more about momentum, and the Commodores remain scorching.

If you've read anything on the web about college football in, say, the past 72 hours, you've almost certainly come across a slate of news articles, blog posts and columns about how the SEC-Big 12 bowl game announced last week will lead to THE INEVITABLE ONSET OF THE MEGACONFERENCE ERA MIKE SLIVE IS HOLDING THE PRESS CONFERENCE TOMORROW TO ANNOUNCE VIRGINIA TECH AND THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO ARE JOINING THE SEC.

The impetus for that talk, of course, is that this looks very much like laying the groundwork for two semifinals (the Rose Bowl and the Champions Bowl) that leads to a national championship game. And while I think -- somewhat sadly -- that a group of four 16-teams megaconferences are the future of college football, I think we're still a ways away from that.

The reason I think it's further off is that there are several things that have to happen before the Mega-Conference Era actually begins. And I don't know that any of these things are going to suddenly occur tomorrow. In fact, my guess is that we're at least five years away and probably more like a decade out from the last realignment wave sweeping college football in quite some time. Why?

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