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Get ready for some flexing. The 2025 SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament will be 5 days of that.
From the time it starts on Wednesday to the time the confetti falls on Sunday afternoon in Nashville, there’ll be flexing. Whether that’s Greg Sankey doing his flexing on the SEC Network set between games or seeing the Bridgestone Arena scorer’s table flash stats about NET ranking and KenPom, it’s coming.
And hey, who am I to diminish that? You had neutral people like Jay Bilas claim that it’s the most powerful conference in the sport’s history, and that winning the SEC Tournament would be tougher than winning the NCAA Tournament because of what it’ll mean to beat at least 3 elite teams in as many days (H/T Mac & Cube).
What a time to be alive.
Here’s what the bracket looks like for the week ahead:
Will the SEC win its first national title since 2012? We’ll eventually get an answer to that question. For now, these are the 7 burning questions for the SEC Tournament:
1. What does this mean to Auburn?
Let’s remember a few things. One is that Auburn’s regular-season résumé is among the best we’ve ever seen. To rack up 16 Quad 1 victories in the regular season is an insane accomplishment, especially when nobody else had more than 11. If you’re debating whether Auburn will be worthy of a 1-seed, you’re wasting your breath. Let’s also remember that Auburn has 2 instances of winning the SEC Tournament Championship under Bruce Pearl. The first was in 2019, which ended up being the beginning of a Final Four run. The second was, of course, last year when Auburn dominated the field … only to suffer a massive upset loss vs. Yale in the 1st Round of the NCAA Tournament.
Consider that a reminder that this sport is wildly unpredictable. Since the SEC expanded to 14 teams, here’s the final destination for each SEC Tournament champ:
- 2013 Ole Miss — Round of 32
- 2014 Florida — Final Four
- 2015 Kentucky — Final Four
- 2016 Kentucky — Round of 32
- 2017 Kentucky — Elite 8
- 2018 Kentucky — Sweet 16
- 2019 Auburn — Final Four
- 2020 canceled
- 2021 Alabama — Sweet 16
- 2022 Tennessee — Round of 32
- 2023 Alabama — Sweet 16
- 2024 Auburn — 1st Round
Maybe the recent history will play into that, or maybe it won’t. Either way, it’ll be the spin zone if Auburn does anything but repeat as SEC Tournament champs.
2. Between Alabama, Florida and Tennessee, who can lock in a 1-seed?
Here’s a crazy thought. In the last 11 NCAA Tournaments after Kentucky won the SEC’s last national title, the conference earned a 1-seed on 3 occasions. That’s 2014 Florida, 2015 Kentucky and 2023 Alabama. Will the SEC get 3 1-seeds this year? It’s not likely, but it’s still possible. It would match what the ACC did in 2019 with 3 1-seeds, which culminated with Virginia winning it all a year removed from becoming the first 1-seed to fall in the Round of 64. We’ll have time to discuss if Auburn can pull off a similar feat — the Tigers were a 4-seed for that aforementioned upset loss to Yale — but for now, we’ll limit this to Alabama, Florida and Tennessee.
That aforementioned lack of 1-seeds for SEC Tournament champs will linger, but one would think that would be in play for any of those 3 teams after how much respect the conference has gotten nationally. The SEC has 4 of the top 6 in both NET and KenPom. Florida might be the only team out of those 3 who can get a 1-seed without winning the tournament, and some of this could depend on what Houston does in the Big 12 Tournament (never mind the fact that the Cougars lost to Alabama and Auburn back in November).
But the question “how many 1-seeds should the SEC get” will be a popular question on the broadcasts this week.
3. If we’re gonna get weird, can we get another Arkansas-Kentucky matchup … please?
I don’t ask for much. We do need a rematch of this. Yes, I realize that would take 9-seed Arkansas and 6-seed Kentucky both reaching the SEC Tournament Championship, which feels like a pipe dream for a pair of programs that are +25000 and +3000, respectively, to win it (via FanDuel). I’m not saying that Part II would quite have the same juice as John Calipari’s return to Lexington — which is wild considering it would be in a conference title scenario — but both programs would have something to play for with NCAA Tournament seeding.
For what it’s worth, the more realistic Arkansas-Kentucky angle this week is that Calipari only led Kentucky to 1 win in the SEC Tournament in the 2020s. How ironic it would be if Calipari led an emerging Arkansas squad to multiple victories or if UK made a 2010s-like run in Nashville.
4. Who’ll win SEC Tournament MVP?
This would be quite the feat to be the best individual player in this tournament given how much star-power exists. There’s no bigger star than last year’s SEC Tournament MVP, Johni Broome, who would become the first repeat winner of the award since Travis Ford in 1993-94. You could go with the guy who just beat Broome to spoil Auburn’s Senior Night. Take your pick as to whether I’m referring to Grant Nelson or late-game hero Mark Sears. Both of those would play, as would the idea that Zakai Zeigler will flip the script from last year’s horrendous quarterfinal showing against Mississippi State en route to a conference title and tournament MVP honors.
So who wins it?
Walter Clayton Jr. is my pick. Florida has a ton to play for with that aforementioned pursuit of a 1-seed, and it’s been the SEC’s best team over the last month. It’s wild to think that Todd Golden’s squad had that offensive dud against Tennessee to start February, and it hit 79 points in each of its last 10 games. It did that with 5 different leading scorers, including Clayton, though obviously he can dominate a game without putting up 25 points.
A year removed from watching Auburn take the conference tournament title in convincing fashion in a 19-point loss, Clayton and the Gators get some revenge en route to clinching a 1-seed.
5. Can anyone break up the top 4?
We already talked about the pursuit of a 1-seed for the SEC’s top 4 squads, but perhaps the better question is whether that second tier is capable of shaking things up. Mizzou, Kentucky and Ole Miss have something in common — they all have multiple wins against those teams. And the team without multiple such victories among the group of 5-8 seeded squads, Texas A&M, got that monumental win against Auburn in the penultimate regular season game (I know Auburn had already clinched the conference title).
Kentucky would be the most likely choice in that group to make a push because of those 10 Quad 1 victories, but Chris Beard’s squad is dangerous (if it can fend off the Arkansas-South Carolina winner). Mizzou is a bit of a wild card because Dennis Gates’ team should be playing with house money with it being locked into a favorable NCAA Tournament seed a year removed from the goose egg in SEC play, but the defensive issues have been costly in the 4 losses in the last 2 weeks.
Here’s the good news for those teams 5-8 — in each of the last 3 years, at least 1 team seeded 5-8 reached the semifinals. From 2016-24, there was only 1 instance that a 5-8 seed failed to reach semifinals, and 4 times in that stretch, multiple teams seeded 5 or lower got there.
In other words, don’t assume chalk awaits in Nashville.
6. How many games do Oklahoma and Texas need to win to lock in NCAA Tournament bids?
It’s a strange conversation to have about a pair of teams that are a combined 7-14 since the calendar turned to February who are playing on Wednesday as 13-14 seeds. You can decide for yourself if you think that the SEC is helping or hurting its 2 new members’ chances of reaching the NCAA Tournament. Would teams with 5-6 conference wins entering the final weekend of the regular season be on the bubble in any conference outside of the SEC? No, but 5 Quad 1 wins is still valued, and both squads have that. Hence, why Joe Lunardi has Oklahoma in his “last 4 in” with Texas in the “first 4 out.”
We’ve seen past bubble teams like 2022 Texas A&M and 2023 Vanderbilt make deep SEC Tournament runs as perceived bubble teams, only to be left out of the NCAA Tournament field. Of course, those seasons had a different preamble than this one. So much of the conversation with Oklahoma and Texas will be dependent on bid-stealers. Multiple wins and a trip to the quarterfinals might be the minimum for both SEC newbies to avoid sweating out Selection Sunday … and perhaps for both Porter Moser and Rodney Terry to avoid sweating out the hot seat.
7. Does the SEC look like a lock to make history?
By “make history” I mean put 12 teams in the NCAA Tournament, which feels entirely possible even if one of the aforementioned bubble teams, Oklahoma and Texas, get a bid. The Big East holds the current record for 11 teams in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, and it also accomplished that feat with a 16-team conference. That year saw Kemba Walker go on an all-time run by leading 9-seed UConn to both a conference title and a national championship. In other words, it was historic in every way for the Big East. Go figure that Walker’s brilliance managed to outshine the entire Big East. Nobody has repeated a run like that either individually or as a conference.
Fourteen years later, perhaps the SEC is knocking on the door.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
