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The SEC was the best basketball conference in the country from November through March, making it altogether fitting that the league is sending half of the teams still playing to this week’s Final Four in San Antonio.
Even more appropriate is that the SEC is sending its very best to the Alamodome, with regular-season champion Auburn and SEC Tournament champion Florida the league’s representatives. The two SEC champions will face off in the first semifinal on Saturday night, guaranteeing that an SEC program will play for the national championship for the first time since 2014.
The SEC’s journey from basketball backwater to behemoth has been a long one, a product of astute coaching hires, widespread institutional investment, and a league-wide commitment to improvement from the early 2010s when, as John Calipari told SDS this November, he and then-Florida head coach Billy Donovan had to travel the country spreading the gospel of SEC hoops far and wide.
“(Billy) and I had to go tell people, ‘We have a good league, I promise! Come play us. Come see our environments, our athletes. We had to sell people on playing us in the nonconference because they didn’t want to hurt their résumés,” Calipari remembered. “Look at us now. The investment. The atmospheres. The coaching. All of it is better. It’s incredible.”
Auburn and Florida are still spreading the gospel to any heathens, blasphemers and backsliders who still don’t believe.
After Auburn suffocated Michigan in the final 10 minutes of the Sweet 16, erasing a 9-point deficit to win by 13, Bruce Pearl conducted his postgame CBS victory interview surrounded by his team, who danced and smiled and more to the point, chanted “S-E-C, S-E-C.”
After Florida rallied improbably from 9 down to get past Texas Tech in the final 3 minutes of the Elite Eight, Florida junior guard Denzel Aberdeen was quick to point out how the unforgiving SEC conference slate prepared the Gators to keep fighting to the bitter end.
“We’ve been this team all year, resilient, tough, competing against the best in the SEC,” Aberdeen said. “We knew when it came down to winning time, we had the ability to make winning plays.”
Neither Florida nor Auburn is the favorite in San Antonio.
That would be blueblood Duke, playing in its 18th Final Four and led by Cooper Flagg, the freshman sensation who is either 1A or 1B on National Player of the Year ballots, depending on which fan base or which media personality you ask to decide between Flagg and Auburn’s Johni Broome.
But if you believe this Final Four will simply be a Duke coronation, you haven’t paid much attention this season. Four of the best 10 teams in the history of the KenPom database, which began in 1997, are present at this Final Four, with Duke ranked second, Houston ranked 6th, Florida 8th, and Auburn 10th. That makes this year’s Final Four the highest quality grouping of teams this century, which makes sense when you consider that all 4 of the finalists have superior KenPom metrics to at least 10 of the past 25 national champions.
Auburn and Florida are the most battle-tested of those teams, and whichever of the SEC champions survives Saturday’s semifinal will face either Duke or Houston entirely unafraid. Auburn won 16 Quad 1 games before the NCAA Tournament, the second highest total in NCAA history. Florida went a staggering 9-2 vs. teams in the Sweet 16, including its 90-81 win at Auburn on February 8, a game the Gators led by 21 points in the second half before a late Auburn push nudged the final margin to respectability.
The Gators are 17-1 since that win at Auburn, and rank second in the country in efficiency in the month of March, per Bart Torvik. With the nation’s best guard in Walter Clayton Jr. and an embarrassment of riches in terms of depth, Florida can overwhelm opponents, turning close games into routs, as they did against Maryland and their vaunted “Crab 5,” and flipping late deficits into victory with their patented scoring runs, as they did in narrow NCAA Tournament wins over UConn and Texas Tech.
With Clayton Jr.’s dynamic shotmaking and sharpshooting senior Will Richard (38% on 3-pointers since SEC play began) leading the way, Florida ranks third in the country in “kill shots,” which are scoring runs of 10-0 or more.
One of the only teams better than Florida at burying opponents behind an avalanche of back-to-back baskets? Auburn, who has 37 kill shots this season, 1 more than the Gators.
The Tigers pound you inside with Broome and if you dare double, they’ll make it rain with the tremendous outside shooting of Tahaad Pettiford (37%, 70 3-pointers made), Miles Kelly (38%, 86 3-pointers made) Denver Jones (42%, 64 triples made), and Chad Baker-Mazara (37%, 55 3-pointers made). Auburn’s flex cut heavy offense isn’t terribly complicated, but what they do run they run extremely well, cutting violently and getting to great spots on the floor.
Throw in their special group of shooters, and you have one of the best offenses in college basketball, comfortable in any style of game or tempo.
It is Broome, a Consensus First-Team All-American, of course, that gives Auburn the extra element you need to win a national championship. After posting a first half double-double and 22 points and 16 rebounds in the Sweet 16, Broome was even better in the Elite Eight, scoring 25 points and grabbing 14 rebounds despite missing much of the second half with an elbow injury. As great as Cooper Flagg is — and he is marvelous, truth be told — Broome was more integral to his team weathering the weekend and has been just as impressive if not better than Flagg in the NCAA Tournament. What’s more, Broome doesn’t seem to care about individual awards. He just wants to keep winning. So much so, in fact, that he did this minutes after it seemed like he may not ever play for Auburn ever again.
“Just keep doubting him,” Pearl said of Broome afterward. “Keep thinking that he’s not going to be able to get to another gear.”
Speaking of another gear, is there a better closer in college basketball than Walter Clayton Jr.?
The first Florida player ever to be named a Consensus First-Team All-American, Clayton Jr. has pulled Florida out of the fire twice inn the NCAA Tournament, scoring a combined 18 points with 4 assists in the final 4 minutes of Florida’s comeback wins over UConn and Texas Tech. In the NCAA Tournament, where star power reigns and shotmaking guards like Kemba Walker, Shabazz Napier, Joel Berry, and Mateen Cleaves became icons, Florida has the best guard in the sport.
These aren’t the only storylines.
Bruce Pearl is in his second Final Four, playing a revenge game against his former assistant, Todd Golden, who he thinks of as a son.
Golden, who admires Pearl and considers him one of his biggest mentors, has just taken Florida to its sixth Final Four, cementing the program’s status as SEC basketball royalty, as only Kentucky has played more basketball games on the final weekend among SEC programs.
One of these coaches will have a chance to be a national champion on Monday night.
Neither coach is going anywhere anytime soon, with the foundation for additional March success in place at each program for the near and likely, long-term future.
Two SEC champions on college basketball’s grandest stage.
Only one will survive and advance, but for college basketball’s best league, Final Four weekend will be one shining moment well deserved.
Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
