Mark Twain was once misquoted as saying, “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
While the actual quote, “the report of my death was an exaggeration,” is far less flashy, both quotes, the real one and fake one, apply quite well to the 2025 SEC basketball league.
After “the best league in college basketball” made NCAA Tournament history, getting a staggering 14 teams into the big dance and breaking the previous record of 11 set by the Big East in 2011, detractors were quick to pile on after a string of disappointing first-round and First Four showings from SEC schools.
Despite that, as the final buzzer sounded in Atlanta on Sunday, the conference will make up half of the Final Four with No. 1 Florida and No. 1 Auburn both punching their tickets to San Antonio, with the Tigers doing so for just the second time in program history.
The two schools, in combination with No. 1 Houston and No. 1 Duke, will make up the field for the Final Four and National Championship, marking only the second time since NCAA Tournament expansion in 1985 that all four No. 1 seeds made it all the way. (2008 was the first.)
While both Duke and the Cougars will be tough squads to beat, Todd Golden’s Gators and Bruce Pearl’s Tigers will look to win the first basketball national championship for the SEC since Kentucky and then Head Coach John Calipari did so in 2012.
The Tigers, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, defeated Tom Izzo’s No. 2 Michigan State 70-64 in the South Region final in Atlanta after powering past No. 16 Alabama State, No. 9 Creighton and No. 5 Michigan, winning all three games by double digits.
Auburn was a true force to be reckoned with all season, winning the Maui Invitational and SEC regular season championship, spending the bulk of the season ranked No. 1 in the AP Top 25 poll.
A dominant 94-78 victory over Kentucky inside Rupp Arena gave Pearl’s squad the regular season SEC crown with two games remaining.
“This is our fifth team in the last eight years that has won a regular season or tournament championship,” Pearl said after beating UK. “Super proud and super happy about that. It’s what we do it for, to make history.”
As for Florida, Golden’s squad has also been dominant, absolutely torching teams en route to getting the last No. 1 seed and winning the SEC Tournament championship.
The Gators had no issues with No. 16 Norfolk State (95-69), took down the reigning back-to-back national champion in UConn (77-75), breezed by No. 4 Maryland (87-71) and finally took down No. 3 Texas Tech 84-79 to win the West Region.
“Just incredibly proud of our program,” Golden said after winning the SEC Tournament title. “Starts with our players. They’ve done an incredible job all year just being coachable and unselfish. We knew early on in the year we had really good talent. But the thing that separates us is our unselfishness, our willingness to put the greater good of the program in front of ourselves.”
Golden was equally complimentary of his squad after it took down the Red Raiders in San Francisco to clinch a ticket to San Antonio and a shot at a national championship.
“It’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible,” he said. “It’s a direct result of the work that our players have done all year and the work my staff has done. They’ve all, to a man, been incredibly consistent, unselfish and worked their tail off. We don’t do this without the collective work of our program. But I’m incredibly proud to be able to be here in year three. And to get Florida back to the Final Four is something that’s incredibly special.”
With Florida set to face off against Auburn in the Final Four, one of the two is guaranteed to go out short of a national championship appearance, but the SEC is also guaranteed to have a national championship representative at the same time.
It’s a testament to the strength of the conference, which has proven itself and its strength after a less than stellar start to the big dance with so many schools in.
As Texas would fall in the First Four – and subsequently fire Rodney Terry – Oklahoma, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Georgia and Missouri would all get dumped in the first round, with the Tigers being stunned by No. 11 Drake.
The conference would then lose Texas A&M in the second round, but still managed seven schools in the Sweet Sixteen with No. 10 Arkansas stunning No. 2 St. John’s in the second round.
From there, four more would advance to the Elite Eight with one of the fallen, Kentucky, being taken out by a fellow SEC school in Tennessee.
While Alabama’s loss to Duke and Tennessee’s thrashing at the hands of Houston killed hopes of an all-SEC Final Four, the conference is still in a good position to reach the pinnacle of the sport for the first time in over a decade.
Simply put, for most of the conference’s existence, basketball was firmly on the backburner in favor of a much bigger and more profitable sport in football.
In fact, since the turn of the century, there have been 25 national champions in football and 16 of those came from schools currently within the SEC. Alabama won six titles, LSU won three, Georgia and Florida won two and Texas, Auburn and Oklahoma won one each.
Meanwhile, only three SEC schools have ever won a basketball championship, though Texas and Missouri claim pre-tournament titles that aren’t recognized by the NCAA.
Kentucky has won eight national titles, the second most of any program in history, but has only done so once since 2000 (2012). Florida famously went back-to-back in 2006-07, but just made its first Final Four since 2014. Arkansas, meanwhile, has only one title and it came in 1994.
After just three SEC schools made the big dance in 2013, the conference made a conscious effort to increase its stakes in hoops with Auburn and Alabama both making their first ever Final Fours within the last six seasons.
“It’s a unicorn league right now,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said ahead of Selection Sunday to ESPN. “We’re not going to change our name, but we stand alone historically. And I think that’ll be rewarded. I hope our coaches are proud. I hope our athletics directors are proud. We had a great visit with our presidents and chancellors, where I went through some graphics of where we were from 2006 to 2015 and then 2016 and beyond. And it’s been building, and it’d be nice to kick the door down, as they say.”
All in all, it is to be seen whether or not the conference can bring home the big prize or if Duke or Houston will play spoiler, but in a season that has been historic for Southeastern basketball, the celebrations don’t seem to be stopping.
