This is the tenth year of SEC expansion, with Missouri and Texas A&M joining the fray in the 2012-13 season. It felt like it would be an immediate upgrade: the Tigers went 30-5 the year before, earning a #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
But the first year of league expansion ended up being a relative low point for SEC basketball in 2013: Missouri made it in as a #9 seed, Florida at #3, and Ole Miss got in via Marshall Henderson in the SEC Tournament. The league finished seventh in KenPom’s conference rankings (based on the strength of a .500 team in each league). The next two years, the SEC was all about the team at the top: Florida went 18-0 in league play in 2014, Kentucky 18-0 and 31-0 overall in 2015. And in 2016, the league again sent just three teams to the NCAA Tournament, with Kentucky and Texas A&M splitting the title at 13-5.
The league’s forward momentum started quietly in 2017. Rick Barnes and Bruce Pearl were still getting things off the ground in Knoxville and Auburn. Five teams made the dance that season, and they took advantage: Florida, Kentucky, and South Carolina all made the Elite Eight. By 2018 the Vols and Tigers were ready, sharing the league title at 13-5. And eight teams made the NCAA Tournament.
It was definitive progress for the SEC, which finished fourth in the KenPom conference rankings. But the Vols were actually the highest-seeded of those eight tournament teams, leading a group that fell between the three and nine lines.
For better or worse, Tennessee’s best teams have coincided with the league’s highest peaks. The next year in 2019, the SEC had five teams seeded #5 or higher in the tournament. LSU won the league at 16-2, with Kentucky and Tennessee at 15-3. It is still the only season to feature multiple teams winning 15+ league games.
2020 would’ve been a step back in terms of NCAA Tournament bids, but the league was back at it last season with six teams in the field, including three earning a #5 seed or higher. The SEC again finished fourth in KenPom’s rankings.
That brings us to the present, where four teams will enter Saturday with a chance to earn a piece of the league title. Whoever comes in fourth is going to finish 13-5, which has never happened before. That number was good enough to win the league in 2016 and 2018. And in the latest Bracket Matrix, the SEC has one team on each of the first six seed lines.
In KenPom, the SEC is the second-best conference in college basketball. And they trail only the Big 12, a league they’ve bested in our annual challenge the last two seasons.
The league’s top six teams are all in the Top 25 in KenPom. In these last ten years, the SEC only had more than three teams finish in the Top 25 twice: four in 2018, and five in 2019. Once again, the league’s overall health has coincided with Tennessee’s best basketball.
It’s exciting to consider the league sustaining this level into the future, with Texas and Oklahoma on their way in a few years. But there’s never been this kind of excitement and parity at the top in the present. We’ll see it unfold on Saturday, with four elite teams in the hunt for the league title. We’ll see it in Tampa, with a number of other schools trying to get in from the bubble. And we’ll see it where it matters most in the NCAA Tournament, with a record number of schools giving themselves a chance to advance.
This is as good as SEC basketball has been in my lifetime. And Tennessee still has a chance to win it.
