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Peter Burns identifies most important SEC player in March Madness
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Peter Burns is ready to name the most important SEC basketball player for the upcoming March Madness run. However, Burns’s pick is not even about future performance.
Rather, Burns is going with a key injury that he believes set one team up in a better position heading into the NCAA Tournament:
“I can argue that Alex Condon is the most important player for the SEC in all of March Madness, and it’s not even for what he’s going to do in the tournament but what happened to him a couple of weeks ago,” Burns claimed.
Burns went on to claim that if Condon had not been injured in mid-February and missed some time, it’s likely Florida big man Micah Handlogten would not have burned his redshirt in order to return to the floor late in the season. The timing of Condon’s injury gave Handlogten a chance to contribute and opened the door for a much deeper rotation at the disposal of Todd Golden.
“To his credit, Todd Golden has found a way to utilize all those guys in the right rotations. It’s not only just Condon him going down, Handlogten deciding to do that, but had that happened a week ago, I don’t think Florida’s where they’re at right now,” predicted Burns.
Now, post-injury, Florida is able to rotate 4 supremely talented frontcourt pieces in Condon, Handlogten, Rueben Chinyelu and Thomas Haugh. Most teams would like just one of those players on their roster, but Golden has found the right formula to keep each player healthy and effective when on the floor.
As for Handlogten, he has appeared in 10 games since returning from his horrific injury at the end of last season and is averaging 14.5 minutes per game. He is shooting 85.7% from the floor in those games while averaging 5.4 rebounds, 1.2 assists and just under 1 block per game.
It’s hard to know where Florida would be without the late-season shakeup, but they are the favorite to advance out of the West Region, listed at -125 in the odds to reach the Final Four at DraftKings. The Gators are also 2nd in the odds to win March Madness at +380, trailing only Duke at +320.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
