John Calipari recently compared playing in the SEC this season to sitting at a poker table full of sharks. Arkansas coach told reporters that he looked up and down the league standings and found no automatic wins.
“Then I started thinking, ‘Is this We victory?’ “, Calipari deadpans. “Maybe they’re watching and saying, ‘We’re playing Arkansas.’ Thank God for that.’
Calipari surely isn’t the only SEC men’s basketball coach dreading the challenge of 18 games ahead. The SEC isn’t just the best league in sports this season. This constitutes one of the strongest arguments in recent memory.
As of Monday morning, SEC teams had a combined record of 144-20 this season. The SEC’s winning percentage of 0.878 tops men’s basketball’s four other power conferences, the Big 12 (0.743), Big Ten (0.742), Big East (0.689) and ACC (0.635).
It’s not like the SEC only feasts on cupcakes, either. SEC teams are 55-17 against power conference opponents and 17-8 against AP Top 25 teams. That’s already four more Top 25 regular-season and non-conference wins than any other league has ever accumulated in a season, by Jared Berson, former ESPN stats and news researcher.
Tennessee held on to first place in Monday’s AP Top 25 after escaping at the buzzer at Illinois on Saturday despite fouling out leading scorer Chaz Lanier and standout point guard Zakai Zeigler. Auburn tightened its grip on No. 1 in all advanced metrics Saturday with a 91-53 demolition of Ohio State.
All 16 SEC teams are in the top 68 Ken Pomeroy’s Adjusted Efficiency Ranking. Twelve SEC teams are in KenPom’s top 40. The league placed Tennessee, Auburn, Kentucky, Alabama and Florida in the top seven of the new AP Top 25 and allowed Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Ole Miss to place in the top 17. Of the 16 teams In the SEC, only LSU, Vanderbilt and South Carolina did not receive votes.
The numbers get more and more staggering the deeper you get into the weeds. The SEC is 50-19 in top-100 games so far this season, according to Bart Torvik’s notes. No other conference is even within striking distance of .500.
There are many ways to show the SEC’s dominance in non-conference games, but here’s a good one: SEC teams are 50-19 in top 100 games, while no other conference sniff 0.500. pic.twitter.com/t78x4GVDT0
– Bart T🏀rvik (@totally_t_bomb) December 15, 2024
The SEC’s remarkable performance in non-conference play raises the question of how this iteration of the league compares historically. Could the 2024-25 SEC be the strongest men’s basketball conference in recent history? Or, at the very least, one of them?
It would be a mistake to crown the SEC without seeing how it fares over the final two weeks of non-conference play and in the NCAA Tournament, but the league’s glorious start has propelled it into the conversation.
Torvik followed the strength of the conference since 2008 using the average rating of each team in a league. No other league rated as high as the 2024-25 SEC on Dec. 16 in any given year, not even the 2010-11 Big East which sent a record 11 teams to the NCAA tournament or the Big 12 2017-18 that has almost eight of its ten teams earned offers.
Pomeroy used similar methods to track conference strength throughout the season since 1997. So far, only the 1996-97 ACC and the 2003-04 ACC outperform this year’s SEC.
It would have been hard to imagine the SEC being so dominant a decade ago, when the league had Kentucky, Florida and little else. Football’s premier SEC only sent three teams to the NCAA Tournament in 2013, 2014 and 2016. In 2013, SEC schools went a combined 15-33 against the other major conferences and recorded a record of defeats against each of them.
How did the SEC go from basketball laughingstock to powerhouse?
Let’s go back to 2016, when SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey admitted his league ‘didn’t meet our own expectations’ and did something by hiring former longtime Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese as a men’s basketball consultant.
Over the next few years, SEC schools began planning smarter, hiring experienced head coaches and improving their facilities. It started with Tennessee taking a chance on Rick Barnes, Auburn changing the trajectory of its program by bringing in Bruce Pearl and Alabama and Mississippi State swinging for the fences (and fading) with Avery Johnson and Ben Howland. Later, Texas A&M splurged on Buzz Williams, Alabama hit a home run with Nate Oats and Ole Miss gambled on Chris Beard. Then there was the biggest story of last spring: John Calipari in Arkansas.
SEC football’s surplus of money became an even bigger difference maker as the transfer portal produced unfettered free agency and the relaxation of NIL rules turned recruiting battles into recruiting wars. auction. NIL collectives have equipped SEC coaches with enviable war chests, helping them pursue elite freshmen and valuable transfers.
Over the past four years, the SEC has finished no better than second or worse than fourth among power conferences. This year, the league took a big step forward, helped by an influx of confirmed transfers and the return of veterans Mark Sears, Johni Broome, Zakai Zeigler and Wade Taylor IV from last year’s first all-SEC team.
Pomeroy tracks the average number of full Division I seasons played by a team’s current roster, weighted by minutes played. Ole Miss, Kentucky and Texas A&M are each in the top 10 nationally in Division I this season. Auburn, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee are all in the top 25.
All of the SEC’s early season success could translate into a record number of NCAA bids come Selection Sunday. Joe Lunardi most recent bracketology projection has 12 SEC schools in the NCAA tournament. This would shatter the 2011 Big East record if it stands.
Regardless of how many NCAA bids the SEC gets, the conference needs to do a better job of using this season to validate its early success. Five of the SEC’s eight 2024 NCAA Tournament teams failed to survive the Round of 16, not exactly the show of force Sankey was looking for when he argued for expanding the tournament in order to to create more deals for his league and other deep-pocketed power conferences.
This year, the SEC is positioned to send a handful of teams to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament and perhaps end a 13-year national title drought.
Not long ago, this league consisted of Kentucky, Florida, and a bunch of minnows. Now, as Calipari said last week: “It doesn’t matter who you play. You can lose.
