NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The SEC made history on Sunday, breaking the all-time record for most teams in the NCAA Tournament in a single season for any conference.
The conference managed to sneak 14 teams into the big dance, despite reports before the bracket reveal that Texas may be left out. The previous record, held by the Big East and set in 2011, was 11 teams from one league.
SEC basketball has truly flourished in the 2024-25 season, making unprecedented strides in the strength of the league.
Not only did 14 teams — Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt — qualify for the field, the conference also snatched up two No. 1 seeds, with Auburn gathering the No. 1 overall spot and Florida also getting a top seed.
The only teams from the 16-team conference not to hear their name called on Selection Sunday were LSU and South Carolina.
The Longhorns, which needed the most help coming into the SEC Tournament barring LSU and South Carolina, which both needed an auto bid or had no chance, got two Quadrant-1 wins over Vanderbilt and Texas A&M before falling to Tennessee in the quarterfinals.
After that loss, Tennessee Head Coach Rick Barnes was adamant that the Longhorns were a tournament team.
“To me there’s no doubt they’re an NCAA team, the fact that he came in here and got ’em playing the way they were,” Barnes said. “Utmost respect for the University of Texas and Rodney (Terry) and his staff. I think this was the fifth or sixth game where they had their whole team intact trying to play. They came in here in a very tough situation.”
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey was also adamant about the league deserving 14 teams as opposed to the 13 it got in an interview with ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
In that interview, Thamel reported that as early as January, Sankey required the conference to move forward with the assumption that 14 was not only possible, but the likely reality.
“We should never talk about less than 14,” Sankey said in the story. “Literally, we said every expectation we communicate has at least 14, and maybe more, depending on how the season plays out.”
The expectations were hardly unfounded for a conference that, before getting into league play, went 185-23 to start the season, logging wins over every single projected No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 seed apart from Michigan State and Wisconsin, which didn’t play any SEC schools. This includes the conference having non-con wins over the likes of Houston (Auburn) and Duke (Kentucky).
Because of this monumental feat, multiple squads with losing conference records were able to make the dance as teams such as Arkansas, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt and Georgia, all of which had losing SEC records, finished their non-con slates a combined 47-5.
“It’s the best league that’s maybe ever been in any year of college basketball,” Kentucky Head Coach Mark Pope said ahead of the SEC Tournament. “This SEC matters.”
Outside of the No. 1 line, Alabama and Tennessee both earned No. 2 seeds in the dance while Kentucky heard its name called on the No. 3 line.
On the other side of the bracket in terms of comfortability, the Longhorns were sent to Dayton for the First Four to face off against Xavier as one of the last four teams to make the field.
The rest of the conference filled out the rest of the bracket in varying locations, including Oklahoma, which made its first NCAA Tournament under Head Coach Porter Moser in its first year in the conference.
The Sooners, who won the Battle 4 Atlantis over Louisville in the non-con and entered conference play undefeated, secured their spot in the dance with a win over Georgia in the first round of the SEC Tournament.
“We are a part of it,” Moser said when asked about his confidence in making the tournament after beating Georgia. “I mean, I thought we were above the bubble going into this game. What the conference is, it’s unprecedented. It’s unprecedented what this league is, what you have to do night in and night out.”
John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks also locked their spot into the dance in Nashville, not necessarily needing a win, but simply needing to not lose against South Carolina.
Prior to the conference tournament, Vanderbilt and Georgia had locked in their spots in the final weeks of the regular season while the rest did so even earlier.
As the conference looks to cement itself in history as the definitive best of all time and win its first national championship since 2012 (Kentucky), 14 teams in the conference give it the best chance to do so.
The first conference team to kick off play in the NCAA Tournament will be Texas in Dayton on Wednesday, March 19.
