Raise your hand if you had Greg Sankey coming off the top rope on bottom-feeder Danny Kanell on the subject of SEC basketball on your 2025 bingo card.
Me neither, but here we are.
It started when Kanell spotted an article by basketball analytics guru Ken Pomeroy. The headline read, “Why hasn’t anyone said the SEC is overrated?” followed by the subhead, “The SEC is probably overrated.”
Kanell, the former Florida State quarterback whose incessant anti-SEC rhetoric is the only thing keeping his voice even remotely relevant in the public square, couldn’t resist. He tweeted a screenshot of the headline and added this comment: “The smartest man in basketball is saying out loud what I have been thinking for the past 3 months … Thank you @kenpomeroy.”
Kanell and thinking rarely collide, but the SEC commissioner decided to climb the turnbuckle and body-slam him anyway with fact after fact. The best body blow of all was the SEC’s 30-4 record this season against Kanell’s beloved ACC.
As amusing as the social media exchange was, especially given the obvious mismatch between the most powerful man in college sports and college football’s biggest heel, it highlighted the importance of the next month for the best college basketball conference in the land by any measure.
In short, it’s past time for the SEC to march through March in numbers too big to ignore and stage an all-out April assault on the Final Four in San Antonio.
It’s been 13 years since an SEC school won the national championship in men’s basketball with freshman phenom Anthony Davis leading Kentucky to the 2012 title. Of the 11 NCAA Tournaments since – COVID canceled the 2020 event – the Big East has won five (Louisville 2013, Villanova 2016 and ’18, UConn 2023 and ’24); the ACC three (Duke 2015, North Carolina 2017, Virginia 2019); the Big 12 two (Baylor 2021, Kansas 2022); and the AAC one. UConn 2014 was a member of the American.
There are additional bullet points to illustrate the SEC shooting blanks when it counts the most. The golden age of SEC postseason basketball ran from 1993-2007. In that 15-year period, five different SEC schools made 12 Final Four appearances in nine different tournaments. They compiled a 13-7 Final Four record, and three of them – Kentucky (1996 and ’98), Florida (2006 and ’07) and Arkansas (1994) – combined to win five national championships.
Contrast that run with the 16 NCAA Tournaments since. From 2008-24, five different SEC schools made eight Final Four appearances in seven different tournaments. They compiled a 3-7 Final Four record, and only that 2012 Kentucky team won it all.
In fact, the conference is riding a five-game Final Four losing streak into the upcoming Big Dance. Now’s the time to change the narrative when the largest audience is following the story.
SEC basketball is healthier, wealthier and deeper than it’s ever been, as witnessed by this season’s ridiculous 185-23 non-conference record, which Sankey noted to Kanell. But you don’t have to know ball to know that March – capped by the first weekend in April – matters more to more people than Auburn’s SEC regular-season championship or whatever happens at next week’s conference tournament in Nashville.
The Tigers in particular, despite their history-making romp through the toughest SEC in memory, will have unfinished business when March Madness begins in earnest. Tuesday’s hangover at Texas A&M is easily understandable and forgettable. Last year’s first-round NCAA Tournament flameout against Yale will long live in infamy unless they can eclipse it with a national championship.
You know, the way Virginia did in 2019, and if it takes three officials ignoring a double-dribble at crunch time in the national semifinals to make it happen, so be it.
Opinions will vary on the minimum requirements over the next month for the SEC to validate its unsurpassed regular season in the minds of the casual March observers. If the league does indeed send a record 12 or 13 teams into the field, anything less than supplying a quarter of the Sweet 16 and half of the Final Four will be a disappointment.
The SEC has advanced four teams to the regional semifinals three times in 1986, 1996 and 2019. It has put two teams in the Final Four four times in 1994, 1996, 2006 and 2014. Both of those personal bests are in jeopardy given the quality depth of the league this season.
The ACC set the record with six Sweet 16 teams in 2016. That’s certainly within the SEC’s reach. So is the Final Four record, which has stood for 40 years.
The Big East remains the only conference to fill three spots in a single Final Four. Georgetown, St. John’s and shocking eventual champion Villanova set that bar in 1985 in the first 64-team tournament, which ended in SEC country at Rupp Arena.
Since Texas is now part of the conference footprint, it would be fitting for the home of Johni Broome, Mark Sears, Walter Clayton and Zakai Ziegler to stage an all-out SEC assault on the Final Four at the home of the Alamo.
The Danny Kanells of the world will be hate-watching all the way to April 7th. Imagine their @ mentions if Auburn, Alabama, Florida or Tennessee cuts down the last net at one of the other’s expense while confetti falls on Sankey and the All-SEC celebration. That would be One Shining Moment for the ages.
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