Mark Story: Soooo, UK fans should root for the Cats to finish 2nd in SEC tourney?

Fast-break points from the onslaught of Madness:

21. The SEC Tournament. After going from 1953 through 1978 without a men’s postseason basketball tournament, the Southeastern Conference resumed its league tourney in 1979.

20. UK in control. Of the 37 “modern” SEC Tournaments, Kentucky has won 16 of them (the 1988 UK tourney title was subsequently vacated due to NCAA rules violations. Due to probation, the Cats did not play in the 1990 and ’91 SEC Tournaments).

19. A precursor to NCAA success? Winning the SEC tourney has not been a perfect indicator of how Kentucky will play in the far more important NCAA Tournament.

18. Final Four success. Of the 16 UK teams that won the SEC Tournament between 1979 and 2015, six (37.5 percent) went on to make the Final Four.

17. Root for Cats to be SEC tourney runner-up? Kentucky has won three NCAA titles since 1979. Only one of those teams, Tubby Smith’s 1998 Cats, also won the SEC Tournament. Rick Pitino’s 1996 NCAA champs and John Calipari’s 2012 national title winners were SEC tourney runner-ups. For that matter, so, too, was Calipari’s 2014 NCAA runner-up.

16. An NCAA championship screen. Those looking for an edge in NCAA Tournament pools should visit kenpom.com, the website of basketball statistics guru Ken Pomeroy. Since 2002, every NCAA champion except Connecticut in 2014 has finished in the top 25 of both Pomeroy’s adjusted offensive effeciency and adjusted defensive efficiency.

15. Current championship ‘qualifiers.’ As of Monday, five teams are in the top 25 in adjusted offensive and defensive effeciency in the kenpom ratings: Virginia (9 offensively, 7 defensively), Kansas (6, 11), Villanova (12, 8), West Virginia (23, 5) and Oklahoma (17, 13).

14. Three are close. A trio of teams are close to being kenpom “championship qualifiers”: Michigan State (1, 27), North Carolina (5, 29) and Arizona (19, 26). As of Monday, UK was eighth in adjusted offensive efficiency but only 53rd in adjusted defensive efficiency.

13. Cats-Hoosiers. Have a hunch that the former longtime border rivals — who have not played since UK beat IU 102-90 in the 2012 NCAA tourney — are going to see each other during March Madness. According to Monday’s kenpom ratings, Kentucky is No. 8 and Indiana No. 9.

12. All on WKU. With Austin Peay having won the OVC Tournament and Louisville having ended its season with a self-imposed postseason ban, the only way the state of Kentucky can have more than UK in the men’s NCAA Tournament is for Western Kentucky to win the Conference USA Tournament.

11. UK Hoops. If the bracketologists are right, Matthew Mitchell’s Kentucky women’s hoopsters seem likely to get to play the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament in Memorial Coliseum.

10. No Rupp Arena for Wildcats? However, because SEC rival South Carolina is apt to be the top seed in the Lexington Regional and NCAA bracket rules discourage placing highly seeded league rivals in the same part of the bracket, UK seems unlikely to have the chance to play the rounds of 16 and eight in Rupp Arena.

9. Justice for UK Hoops? Kentucky has been the No. 2 seed in Connecticut’s region three times (2012, ’13, and ’15) in the last four NCAA Tournaments. If there is any fairness, UK — currently projected to be a three seed by ESPN.com bracketology — will not be placed with UConn again.

8. Peyton Manning’s retirement. Making a wise decision, the 39-year-old, soon-to-be Hall of Fame quarterback decided to go out on top after helping Denver win Super Bowl 50.

7. Manning vs. Kentucky. In his college days at Tennessee, Manning started four times (1994-97) against UK. Of course, he went 4-0.

6. Two Knoxville blowouts. Manning’s first start against Kentucky came in 1994. The true freshman QB went 10-of-15 passing for 122 yards and two touchdowns in Neyland Stadium while UT finished off UK’s 1-10 disaster of a season with a 52-0 pasting.

5. Bill Curry’s exit. As a junior in 1996, Manning threw for 317 yards and three TDs, and home-standing UT obliterated UK 56-10 in what was Curry’s final game after seven years as Kentucky coach.

4. Two Lexington gems. Both of Manning’s appearances in Commonwealth Stadium were memorable.

3. A comeback victory. In 1995, Moe Williams and Billy Jack Haskins helped a motivated UK build a 24-9 second-half lead over No. 4 Tennessee. A fourth-quarter Manning TD pass allowed UT to escape with a 34-31 win.

2. An epic shootout with Tim Couch. In 1997, Manning outdueled UK star QB Couch in one of the more entertaining games in Commonwealth history. In a 59-31 Volunteers victory, the UT QB completed 25 of 35 passes for 523 yards and five touchdowns, while Couch was 35-for-50 for 476 yards and two scores with three picks.

1. Career vs. the Cats. For his career against Kentucky, Peyton Manning went 74-for-114 (64.9 percent) for 1,235 yards with 12 touchdown passes and two interceptions.

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Mark Story: Soooo, UK fans should root for the Cats to finish 2nd in SEC tourney?."