16 fun facts about the 7 SEC programs in the Sweet 16

Baseball’s Opening Day has arrived, and to borrow a baseball phrase, the SEC has all the bases covered in the Sweet 16, which happens to gloriously arrive on the same day.

As we hit the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, there is at least 1 SEC team playing for the ultimate title in each of the 4 regions. In fact, there are 2 SEC teams still standing in each of the South, Midwest and West regions, with Alabama the lone SEC survivor in the East. 

Do the quick math and that’s a staggering 7 SEC teams in the Sweet 16, as the conference known for decades for its football excellence continues a historic season on the hardwood. After getting a record 14 teams into the tournament, the SEC set yet another mark with its 7 entrants in the Sweet 16, again upstaging the ACC, which previously held the record of 6 teams in 2016.

With 2-seed Tennessee and 3-seed Kentucky set to clash in an all-SEC Midwest Region semifinal on Friday night in Indianapolis, the conference could have as many as 6 teams in the Elite Eight, which would be mind-boggling. But let’s focus on the matter at hand, the Sweet 16, in which there is an SEC team playing in 6 of the 8 matchups on Thursday and Friday nights.

Ridiculous and remarkable. 

So, as an ode to the Sweet 16 and the SEC representing nearly half the remaining field, we’re going to take a deep dive into each of these 7 SEC programs that are all in the midst of a special season. Here are 16 fun facts, historical and present-day, about each of the SEC’s “Magnificent 7” as they aim for more glory and a shot to get to San Antonio.

We’ll go in alphabetical order:

Alabama fun facts

1. The Crimson Tide are in the Sweet 16 for the third-straight season for the second time in program history. The first time came when the ever-colorful Wimp Sanderson led Alabama to the Sweet 16 in 1985, ’86 and ’87, although the ’87 team’s accomplishment was later vacated because of NCAA violations regarding ineligible players.

2. All-American point guard Mark Sears has now led the Tide to 3 Sweet 16 appearances in his 3 seasons in Tuscaloosa after the Muscle Shoals native came back to his home state following his first 2 collegiate seasons at Ohio.

3. Alabama was retroactively recognized as the pre-NCAA Tournament national champion for the 1929-30 season by something called the Premo-Porretta Power Poll.

4. Senior forward Grant Nelson, the heart and soul of the Crimson Tide during all of their success the past 2 seasons, is the furthest thing from an Alabama guy. He was born in a town called Devils Lake, North Dakota, and was named North Dakota Mr. Basketball as a senior in high school before spending 3 seasons at North Dakota State.

5. Alabama’s offense ranks No. 1 in Division I this season in scoring at 90.8 points per game and tempo, according to KenPom.com.

6. The Crimson Tide are being given a 64.8% chance by ESPN’s matchup predictor to get past gritty 6-seed BYU on Thursday night and get to their second-straight Elite Eight for the first time in program history.

7. Alabama and BYU, 2 schools rich in football tradition, will be facing off for just the third time on the hardwood, with the Tide winning both previous meetings in 2017 and way back in 1957.

8. Thanks mostly to that lights-out offense, the Crimson Tide have managed to get to another Sweet 16 despite allowing 80 or more points a staggering 20 times in their 35 games this season.

9. Back to Sears, who has gotten around in his still young basketball career. In 2019, the Tide basketball legend transferred to Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia, leading Hargrave to the Final 4 of the National Prep Championship with a 37-4 record.

10. That oft-criticized Alabama defense rose to the challenge in the second round last Sunday with one of its best defensive efforts of the season, holding West Coast Conference regular-season champion Saint Mary’s to paltry 34.3% field goal shooting and 3 measly 3-point makes.

11. Bama starting center Clifford Omoruyi grew up playing soccer in faraway Benin City, Nigeria, before catching the attention of basketball scouts and moving to New Jersey at age 14, when he finally began playing basketball.

12. Tide head coach Nate Oats, who’s led Bama to 4 Sweet 16 appearances in the past 5 seasons, is a mad scientist on the sidelines and was sort of one away from the hardwood, too. The Wisconsin native received a Master of Science from the University of Wisconsin in kinesiology and exercise science.

13. Alabama basketball isn’t Alabama football, but it’s better than most think — among SEC teams, the Crimson Tide trail only basketball blue-blood Kentucky in SEC Tournament titles. 

14. Before coming to Tuscaloosa in 2019, Oats went a stunning 96-43 in his first head coaching job at Buffalo and was a 2-time MAC Coach of the Year in 2018 and ’19.

15. Star freshman guard Labaron Philon is Alabama through and through. He was born and raised in Mobile and starred at Baker High School in Mobile, where he was a 2-time Class 7A Player of the Year and Alabama Mr. Basketball as a junior. 

16. Alabama played its first-ever basketball season in 1912-13, a full 20 years after the Crimson Tide football program played its first season.

Arkansas fun facts

1. Head coach John Calipari has the Cinderella 10-seed Hogs in the Sweet 16 in his first season in Fayetteville, but he’s already been immortalized, having been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame 10 years ago.

2. Sticking with Coach Cal, the 66-year-old is famous for popularizing the dribble-drive motion offense, which was developed by Vance Walberg.

3. These Razorbacks somehow found their way into the NCAA Tournament and now the Sweet 16 after starting 0-5 and 1-6 in the SEC this season.

4. Arkansas will face old Southwest Conference rival Texas Tech in the Sweet 16 on Thursday night, and the all-time series between the schools is about as close as possible, with the Hogs being 39-40 against the Red Raiders.

5. This is the 30-year anniversary of the 1995 Arkansas team that got to the national title game but lost to UCLA, falling 1 win short of repeating as champion.

6. Arkansas is in the Sweet 16 for the 15th time in its proud basketball history, including for the 4th time in the past 5 seasons.

7. This Razorbacks team began its stunning turnaround in the most ironic place possible, when then they went to Lexington and took down Kentucky on the first night of February in Calipari’s much-anticipated return to Rupp Arena.

8. The Hogs have overcome a lot to get here, including the absence of leading scorer Adou Thiero since Feb. 22 with a hyperextended left knee. Thiero’s status is up in the air for Thursday night’s showdown after he missed practice on Wednesday with leg discomfort.

9. Long before Coach Cal continued Arkansas’s basketball tradition, Francis Schmidt began it all by serving as the Razorbacks’ first head basketball coach from 1923-29. This was notable because during those same exact years, the ever-versatile Schmidt was also the Arkansas baseball coach and was the Razorbacks football coach from 1922-28. 

10. Since that 1-6 start in the SEC, these Hogs have gone 10-5, starting with the win at venerable Rupp Arena over basketball blue-blood Kentucky and continuing with last weekend’s NCAA Tournament wins over college basketball titans Kansas and St. John’s.

11. Arkansas is the only double-digit seed to make this season’s Sweet 16.

12. More Coach Cal, who is used to success in his first season at SEC schools. In his first season at Kentucky in 2009-10, Calipari led the Wildcats to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and a berth in the Elite Eight.

13. Arkansas coaching icon Nolan Richardson, who led the Hogs to their only national title in 1994, will forever be known for his teams’ intense pressure defense that was popularly called “40 Minutes of Hell.”

14. Richardson put Razorbacks basketball back on the map, leading Arkansas to the Final Four in 1990, ’94 and ’95. The Hogs haven’t been back to the Final Four since.

15. Arkansas got to the Final Four in its very first NCAA Tournament appearance in 1941.

16. The last time Arkansas and Texas Tech met in basketball was also in the NCAA Tournament, when the Hogs outlasted the Red Raiders, 68-66, in the second round of the 2021 tournament on their way to the Elite Eight.

Auburn fun facts

1. It might be forgotten now, but head coach Bruce Pearl had 3 forgettable seasons to start his Auburn coaching tenure before getting the Tigers to the NCAA Tournament in 2018 and to their only Final Four appearance in 2019.

2. Auburn basketball is in uncharted territory in 2025 as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history.

3. All-everything Johni Broome is the first Auburn basketball player to earn a spot on the AP All-American First Team.

4. Not surprisingly, the ESPN matchup predictor believes Auburn has a great chance to get to its third Elite Eight in program history, giving the Tigers a 79.5% chance to beat Big Ten Tournament champion Michigan on Friday night in Atlanta.

5. Before he became a football coaching icon at Auburn, Ralph “Shug” Jordan coached the Tigers basketball team for 10 seasons. Jordan was an assistant football coach at Auburn while coaching the basketball program.

6. Auburn is a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for just the second time in its history, with the other time coming in the 1999 tournament.

7. Broome led the SEC in rebounds per game (10.6) and blocks per game (2.3), and finished behind only Texas’s Tre Johnson in points per game (18.9).

8. Back to Pearl, who has turned the rarest double play in the book in leading 2 different SEC programs to the Sweet 16, leading Auburn to the Sweet 16 for the second time after getting Tennessee there 3 times.

9. Auburn nearly did the unthinkable this season in a historically good SEC, going undefeated on the road in conference play until falling at Texas A&M in its last SEC road game during the final week of the regular season.

10. Neville Arena, the 9,121-seat bandbox where Auburn plays, is affectionally called “The Jungle,” and it was just that this season to most teams who ventured to The Plains to play Broome and the mighty Tigers.

11. Auburn has produced 35 NBA Draft picks.

12. Speaking of the NBA Draft and Auburn, Jabari Smith Jr. is the highest draft pick in Tigers basketball history, being selected with the third overall pick by the Houston Rockets in 2022.

13. It feels like ancient history now, but Broome didn’t start his college basketball career at Auburn. He spent his first 2 seasons at Morehead State in the Ohio Valley Conference before heading to The Plains.

14. On the fateful day of April 30, 2022, when it was time to choose his next collegiate stop, Broome chose Auburn over SEC rival Florida.

15. Auburn came back with a vengeance this season after being upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last year by Yale.

16. Pearl had not taken the Tigers past the second round since getting Auburn to its only Final Four in 2019.

Florida fun facts

1. All-American guard Walter Clayton Jr. took a circuitous path to stardom in Gainesville, going to high school in Florida in Lake Wales and Bartow, then playing his first 2 collegiate seasons all the way up at Iona before heading back to the Sunshine State to play at UF.

2. Sticking with Clayton, the 6-3, 195-pounder was once considered a better college prospect in football, and he had offers to play football at Florida as well as Tennessee, Notre Dame, Nebraska and West Virginia.

3. The Gators’ Sweet 16 showdown with Maryland on Thursday in San Francisco is a homecoming of sorts for head coach Todd Golden, who was the head coach at the University of San Francisco from 2019-2022 before taking the Florida job.

4. Sticking with Golden, the now-Florida head coach had SEC coaching experience before coming to Florida, serving as an assistant at Auburn from 2014-16.

5. All of UF’s 5 SEC Tournament championships have come in the past 2 decades, capped by the Gators rolling to the league tourney title a few weeks ago in Nashville.

6. The previous 3 times Florida won the SEC Tournament, in 2006, ’07 and ’14, the Gators ended up in the Final Four.

7. Florida, which knows a little bit about repeat titles after winning it all in 2006 and ’07, ended 2-time defending champion UConn’s bid for a third-straight crown in a second-round thriller last Sunday.

8. The Gators are in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2017.

9. The 39-year-old Golden is making his first Sweet 16 appearance in his brief head coaching career.

10. Golden hadn’t even won an NCAA Tournament game before leading the Gators to the Sweet 16 this season.

11. Florida entered the second-round showdown with UConn ranked No. 1 in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency, scoring 128.9 points per 100 possessions.

12. UF started playing basketball in 1915 but did not make its first NCAA Tournament appearance until 1987.

13. Florida didn’t even hire its first full-time head basketball coach until hiring Norm Sloan in 1960. Before that a football assistant coach was usually assigned as basketball coach because of UF’s lack of emphasis on the sport.

14. Before Billy Donovan became a coaching legend in Gainesville, he went 13-17 and 14-15 in his first 2 seasons at UF with a combined 11-21 record in the SEC.

15. Golden, who is Jewish, played for Maccabi Haifa in the Israeli Basketball Premier League from 2008-10.

16. Florida has only played 3 games this season decided by less than 4 points, going 2-1, including the 2-point win over UConn last Sunday.

Kentucky fun facts

1. The Wildcats are no strangers to the Sweet 16 or to their Sweet 16 opponent, Tennessee. Kentucky won at Tennessee in the teams’ first meeting this season in late January, then took care of the Volunteers again a few weeks later in Lexington.

2. Long before John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith and Joe B. Hall graced the Kentucky sidelines, Adolph Rupp won 4 NCAA championships in Lexington in the 1940s and ’50s to really birth UK’s esteemed basketball tradition.

3. Sticking with the legendary Rupp, he was the head coach at Kentucky for over 4 decades and was a 7-time SEC Coach of the Year.

4. This Kentucky team was able to gather itself late in the season and get to yet another Sweet 16 after sleepwalking through a 5-7 stretch during conference play.

5. Kentucky was the first college basketball program to get to 1,000 wins in 1968 and then was the first program to reach 2,000 wins in 2009.

6. More glossy UK historical numbers — the program leads all of college basketball with an astounding 63 20-win seasons, 16 30-win seasons and 6 35-win seasons.

7. Kentucky is in the Sweet 16 for the 46th time in its illustrious history.

8. Despite having beaten Tennessee twice this season — or perhaps because of it — ESPN’s matchup predictor doesn’t like the Wildcats’ chances to topple the Vols for a third time, giving them just a 36.9% chance to advance to the Elite Eight.

9. Not surprisingly, Kentucky holds the record for the most overall NBA Draft selections with 128.

10. Sticking with the draft theme, 3 Wildcat legends have been taken with the first overall draft pick — John Wall (2010), Anthony Davis (2012) and Karl-Anthony Towns (2015).

11. According to legend, the first head coach of the Wildcats, W.W.H. Mustaine, called together some students in 1903, collected $3 for a ball and told the students to start playing.

12. Kentucky has won the National Invitation Tournament twice, which makes it the only program to win multiple NCAA and NIT titles.

13. Current Wildcats head coach Mark Pope was the captain of Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team.

14. While Pope has an NCAA Tournament ring as a player, he had never won a tournament game as a head coach before getting to the Sweet 16 in his first season in Lexington.

15. Kentucky has been to a remarkable 17 Final Fours but hasn’t been to one in 10 years.

16. Remarkably, the Wildcats shot exactly 50% from the field and from 3-point territory in both victories over the Vols this season.

Ole Miss fun facts

1. The school of Archie and Eli Manning and football pregame partying in The Grove is a stranger to basketball success and, not surprisingly, has never been beyond the Sweet 16.

2. Speaking of the Rebels and the Sweet 16, this is only Ole Miss’s second trip to the Sweet 16, with the other one coming in 2001.

3. While Ole Miss has never even been to an Elite Eight (yet), its head coach, Chris Beard, led Texas Tech to the national championship game in 2019, where the Red Raiders lost to Virginia in overtime.

4. After disposing of 1 college basketball blue-blood in a first-round victory over North Carolina and upsetting Iowa State in the second round, the 6-seed darlings from Oxford will face another blue-blood in Michigan State on Friday night in Atlanta.

5. While Ole Miss’s NCAA Tournament history is a little skimpy, it has a fine history in the NIT, in which it’s participated 11 times and made it to the semifinals in 2008 and 2010.

6. While the Rebels are a combined 7-9 in 10 NCAA Tournament appearances, including this year, Sweet 16 opponent Michigan State is in its 16th Sweet 16 alone under legendary head coach Tom Izzo.

7. Senior guard Sean Pedulla, who leads Ole Miss in scoring, assists and steals, has put up exactly 20 points to lead the Rebels in each of their first 2 NCAA Tournament games.

8. Beyond Pedulla, the Rebels are incredibly balanced, with 5 players averaging between 10 and 11 points per game.

9. Ole Miss went 10-8 through the SEC regular-season jungle and beat Arkansas twice, won at Alabama, and won at home against Kentucky and Tennessee.

10. Beard was named the AP National Coach of the Year in 2019 after leading Texas Tech to within minutes of a national title.

11. Ole Miss was a No. 3 seed in 2001 when it made its only other Sweet 16 appearance.

12. Rob Evans was hired at Ole Miss in 1992 as the school’s first black coach in a revenue sport and promptly led the Rebels to their second and third NCAA Tournament appearances in 1997 and ’98.

13. Ole Miss’s only NCAA Tournament appearance before those 2 berths in 1997 and ’98 came all the way back in 1981.

14. The Rebels never even had a 20-win season until Evans led them to back-to-back 20-win campaigns in 1997 and ’98.

15. ESPN’s matchup predictor gives Ole Miss a puncher’s chance to get to its first Elite Eight, as the Rebels are listed with a 35.5% shot to knock off Michigan State.

16. Beard won a respectable 20 games in his first campaign in Oxford last year, but the Rebels only went 7-11 in an SEC that was much weaker than the historically great conference it was this season.

Tennessee fun facts

1. The second-seeded Volunteers will hope to prove the old adage that it’s hard to beat the same team 3 times in a season, in any sport, because they face a Kentucky team in the Sweet 16 that took them out twice already this season. Tennessee hopes that after losses to UK in Knoxville and Lexington, that the neutral court meeting on Friday night in Indianapolis is the charm.

2. Tennessee is in a golden age of sorts in basketball under Rick Barnes, appearing in the Sweet 16 for the third-straight year and the fourth time overall under Barnes.

3. The Vols are looking to get back to the Elite Eight for the second-straight year and just the third time in their history.

4. Barnes took a program that wears another shade of orange, Texas, to the Final Four in 2003, long before the Longhorns joined the SEC.

5. Tennessee has grinded its way to the Sweet 16 after managing just 77 points in a first-round win over Wofford and 67 in a second-round slugfest against UCLA.

6. On the other hand, the Vols’ defense has been smothering so far during this NCAA run, allowing 62 points against Wofford and 58 against UCLA, 

7. Tennessee made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the 12th time this century.

8. The Vols’ men’s basketball history is sort of underrated, as they rank third in the SEC in all-time wins.

9. Tennessee is led by its dynamic 3-guard trio of Chaz Lanier, Zakai Zeigler and Jordan Gainey, who are the only 3 Volunteers to average double figures in scoring.

10. On that note, Lanier, Zeigler and Gainey were the only 3 Tennessee players to get to double figures in that ugly but effective second-round win over UCLA.

11. After not appearing in an NCAA Tournament until 1967, Tennessee has made up for lost time in the past half-century, just without a Final Four appearance to show for it.

12. Basketball Hall of Famer Bernard King starred at Tennessee from 1974-77.

13. Lanier, the Volunteers’ leading scorer, exploded for 29 points in that first-round win over Wofford, making 6 3-pointers.

14. Current Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl coached Tennessee to 3 Sweet 16 appearances (and an Elite Eight berth) during his tenure from 2005-11.

15. Barnes has coached Tennessee to 2 SEC regular-season titles (2018 and ’24) and 1 SEC Tournament crown in 2022.

16. Tennessee has been playing men’s college basketball since 1909, but it wasn’t until the Volunteers hired Ray Mears in 1963 that the program began having sustained success.