If you didn’t enjoy the weeks of miserable public debate over whether Alabama or Ole Miss deserved to make the College Football Playoff, just wait until the middle of March.
Talking heads will be comparing the resumes of the 12th-best basketball team in the SEC against No. 3 or 4 in the Big East.
And it will be fully justified.
Men’s basketball is the sport where “It just means more” in 2025, and the SEC is strong enough to break the record for single bids from a conference by getting 12 teams in.
You can start with the human rankings, where five of the top eight teams in the AP poll are SEC stalwarts, and Auburn just replaced Tennessee as king of the hill. A whopping nine SEC teams—more than half the league—are ranked this week, including everyone’s favorite basketball sleeping giant, Georgia, which has knocked off three ranked teams in 2024-25.
Before conference play began, the SEC combined for a ridiculous .889 winning percentage. It won just about every marquee matchup it was a part of in the nonconference. The Big 12 has been criticized in recent years for its teams feasting on the weakest nonconference schedules you can dream up. That’s not what happened here.
Take Florida as Exhibit A.
The Gators ripped through Florida State, Wake Forest, Virginia and Arizona State before meeting North Carolina. It was a massive-air-quotes “neutral court” game in Charlotte. Florida proved itself with a gritty 90-84 win.
The Gators entered SEC action 13-0, promptly lost 106-100 at Kentucky, then shredded the last unbeaten team in the country and then-No. 1 Tennessee—by 30 points.
And for an encore … How does a loss to Missouri sound?
A Florida team stacked with big rebounders like Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu and dangerous shooters like Waler Clayton Jr. and Alijah Martin was outrebounded 15-12 on the offensive glass and outshot 11-9 from the 3-point arc Tuesday… at home… to Missouri.
But wait, who did Missouri beat earlier this season? Oh right, Kansas. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up.
“We as a staff, as a program, did not think of it as a trap game,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “Missouri’s very good. They’re a tournament team, but coming home, you know, people say, ‘Oh, the schedule is (lightening) up.’ It’s just not accurate in this league.”
Every coach of a Power Five program loves to do the “our conference is the toughest” bit. Mark Madsen, in charge of ACC newcomer California, just tried to pull off that nonsense when the ACC has been in decline for what feels like five years now.
The toughest conference is the deepest one, and teams can’t take a night off in the SEC, where 14 of 16 teams were ranked top-50 in the NCAA’s NET rankings to start the week, and the worst-rated team by KenPom.com, South Carolina, is better than 11 ACC teams.
In fact, the only SEC team that probably doesn’t scare anyone right now is the one sitting alone at 0-4 in the standings, Arkansas, and good ol’ Coach Cal.
Lord help us all if John Calipari’s team is the first SEC team left out of the NCAA Tournament. They’ll expand the field or change the qualification criteria faster than you can say Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.
