FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari, following an 82-57 win over Central Arkansas last Saturday, entered the interview room at Simmons Bank Arena prepared to once again send a message about the SEC’s strength.
The league, at this point in time, is the best in the country and has an argument to be the strongest ever in men’s college basketball. And Calipari has seen how far it has come.
The SEC regularly had three NCAA Tournament bids and some sparsely attended arenas during the first half of Calipari’s 15-year tenure at Kentucky that began in 2009. Now, each of its 16 teams are ranked in KenPom’s top 66 and the conference is the top-rated league in the country — a full 3.22 points ahead of the Big Ten in second.
Just last season, the SEC was rated as the fourth-best league.
“I used to argue, ‘We deserve eight teams [in the NCAA Tournament].’ I was full of crap,” Calipari said. “I was saying it to try to help the league and help everybody. Well, you look now 15 of the teams, if you play on the road, that’s a Quad 1 win — 15 out of 16.”
South Carolina (8-3) entered Wednesday as the only SEC team with more than two losses. Three teams — top-ranked Tennessee, seventh-ranked Florida and 14th-ranked Oklahoma — are unbeaten, and second-ranked Auburn is rated as the nation’s best team by most analytics websites.
The league has a 50-4 combined record in December and is 30-4 this season against the ACC, a league once looked at as the cream of the men’s hoops world.
The SEC may be on track to break the all-time record for the number of teams sent to the NCAA Tournament. Eleven qualified from the Big East in 2011.
Joe Lunardi, ESPN’s leading NCAA Tournament expert, had 13 SEC teams in his latest postseason projection.
Georgia coach Mike White called predicted as much at SEC Media Day on Oct. 15 in Birmingham, Ala., when he said, “I think this will be a breakthrough year to potentially have double-digit teams in.”
Eight bids are the most the SEC has ever had, in 2018.
Each of the 16 SEC schools has won at least twice over teams from other Power 5 conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East). The SEC was a combined 152-20 after Tuesday’s games, with the only loss against a team outside of KenPom’s top 80 being South Carolina’s opening-night loss to No. 127 North Florida.
“The SEC is, every game is Quad 1 or Quad 2,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said at SEC Media Day. “I don’t think there’s going to be such thing as a bad loss. There’s going to be potential for good wins, and you have to stack them together and get as many as you can, but it’s a great problem to have.”
The SEC is dominating its competition, be it against lower-end teams or high-major opposition.
“I don’t know if you could’ve seen the league being this good because it’s historic,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl told College Sports on SiriusXM earlier this week. “I’m proud of the league….More than anything, I think it’s the commitment of every university with the coaching staffs, the commitment to [Name, Image and Likeness], the commitment to the fan bases.”
Five of the top 7 in the Associated Press Top 25 are SEC teams. Eight SEC teams that are ranked and 13 received votes in the poll.
“It’s ridiculous how many good teams are in this league,” CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander said on the Eye on College Basketball podcast last Saturday. “This is really encroaching on unprecedented territory.”
Those preseason predictions and metrics, to this point, have rung true. Some teams still have resume-building opportunities — such as Missouri vs. Illinois and Auburn vs. Purdue — before conference play begins in early January. Wins in those games could further enhance the SEC’s reputation.
“This league, folks, oh my,” Calipari said on his weekly radio show Monday. “There are teams that are going to have a losing record in this league and be in the NCAA Tournament…and advance. That’s how good this league is.”
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
