All for Tennessee Women’s Basketball Jan. 25 SEC Power Rankings: Lady Vols Slip

Talk about turning things around! The Missouri Tigers made a huge jump in our SEC Power Rankings this week with two huge wins over the Texas A&M Aggies and Arkansas Razorbacks.

The wins gave them a winning record in the SEC, improved them to 14-7 overall, and got them into the top half of the conference standings.

It also has the Tigers in serious contention for the NCAA Tournament now, as they are No. 42 in the RPI and have the No. 40 ranked strength of schedule.

That is huge for Robin Pingeton, who finally got the Tigers into the Big Dance her fourth year as head coach last year for the first time. Repeating that this year would be a major boost.

Missouri has been wildly inconsistent this year, with two losses to teams out of the Top 100 of the RPI but two wins over teams in the Top 30 of the RPI.

Still, beginning SEC play, their only bad loss was a fluke one at home to the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Outside of that, they have won the games they need to win. And behind the scoring of Sophi Cunningham and Cierra Porter, this team’s offense is picking things up. If Cunningham and Porter are off, though, the defense can step up.

The Tigers can win either way.

But this week, they have two huge tests facing the Auburn Tigers and Kentucky Wildcats. Since road trips to Mississippi State and Tennessee follow, their schedule strength is about to shoot up. And if they can just split these next four, their RPI will shoot up as well. So this team is in great shape.

Following a huge win over Texas A&M, Auburn and Kentucky are the two other teams in the same tier as Missouri as well. So we go to one of them next.