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SEC Tournament action gets rolling on Wednesday with first-round matchups between the 8 lowest seeds in the best basketball conference in America. Consider this for a moment: The 12-13 game on Wednesday featuring Vanderbilt and Texas will match KenPom’s 45th-rated team against its 46th-rated team.
Contrast that with the Big Ten Tournament, which will see the 89th-rated team face the 47th-rated team in the 12-13 game. Even compared to the Big 12, long considered the best power conference in basketball, the SEC’s bracket looks ridiculous. The 12-13 game in the Big 12 tourney pits No. 56 against No. 96.
Three top-40 KenPom teams are among the first 8 to see the court inside Bridgestone Arena.
Three top-20 KenPom teams will play on Thursday in the second round.
Each of the 4 SEC teams that secured a double-bye for this event rank among the top 6 squads in the nation, per KenPom.
This will be a knock-down, grind-it-out battle all week long. The winner will head into March Madness with some scratch marks.
Will it be Auburn again? Or can Florida avenge last year’s title defeat and win its first conference tourney since 2014? Or, perhaps there’s a darkhorse threat looming, preparing to shock the league.
Below, you’ll find a full preview of the 2025 SEC Tournament, along with how to bet on the action.
SEC Tournament odds
| Team | Odds |
| Auburn | +160 |
| Florida | +250 |
| Alabama | +450 |
| Tennessee | +600 |
| Kentucky | +2200 |
| Texas A&M | +2500 |
| Mizzou | +3000 |
| Ole Miss | +6000 |
| Mississippi State | +10000 |
| Arkansas | +10000 |
| Georgia | +15000 |
| Vanderbilt | +20000 |
| Texas | +20000 |
| Oklahoma | +25000 |
| LSU | +50000 |
| South Carolina | +50000 |
Odds via BetMGM
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The Favorite — Auburn
Bruce Pearl, Johni Broome, and the regular-season champion Tigers head into the conference tournament in remarkably unfamiliar territory. Auburn lost at home to Alabama last Saturday, 93-91 in overtime. It was a second-straight loss for the Tigers, who entered the final week of the regular season at 27-2 on the season.
Even beyond this season, Auburn hadn’t lost consecutive games since Jan. 24-27, 2024. Since consecutive road losses to Alabama and Mississippi State more than a year ago, Auburn was 6-0 in games immediately after defeats and was beating its opponents by an average of 26.5 points in those games.
For almost the entirety of the 2024-25 season, Auburn was the paragon of consistency.
The Tigers lost by 11 on the road at Texas A&M on March 4, then returned home and lost on a buzzer-beating floater from Mark Sears. Was Auburn looking ahead to the conference tourney? Or did it just lose a great game to a great team? The A&M result is certainly more interesting than the Alabama one.
Recent history aside, Auburn is still expected to defend last year’s conference tournament title and win it all this season. The Tigers enter the SEC tourney with a plus-35.9 net rating in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency metrics; no SEC team has ended a season with even a plus-30.0 net rating since Kentucky in 2014-15 (plus-36.9). Those Wildcats need no introduction.
Bart Torvik’s tourney projections also give Auburn a 38% chance to win the league title. Florida (20%) and Alabama (16%) are the only other teams with higher than a 15% chance.
The Tigers have the best offense in the country, per KenPom, with an adjusted offensive rating of 130.0. They have a top-15 defense, per KenPom. They have a head coach who is 10-6 in SEC tourney games during his time with the program. And they have a worthy recipient of this year’s Wooden Award in Broome.
Broome leads the SEC this season in 2 counting stats and 3 efficiency metrics. His 10.6 rebounds per game and 2.4 blocks per game are the most in the league. He also has SEC-highs in PER (32.4), win shares per 40 minutes, and box plus/minus (plus-15.3). He is coming off a performance against Alabama that may have been his best of the season — 34 points, 8 rebounds, 5 blocks, 3 steals.
Who will win — Florida
Even though Bart Torvik’s projections say Auburn is almost twice as likely to win the SEC Tournament as Florida, I’m backing Todd Golden’s Gators in Nashville.
Motivation isn’t close to the main reason, though it is worth mentioning. Auburn has nothing left to prove to a selection committee that knows if the Tigers wanted to go all-out for a tournament title, it could. The Tigers will be the first or second overall seed. Maybe they care about being No. 1. Maybe they don’t. I would imagine Florida — which lost to Auburn in the conference tournament title game last season and missed out on the regular-season title this season despite beating Auburn at Auburn — has plenty of motivation to chase the tourney crown.
More than anything, though, I believe Florida is the most complete team in basketball. The Gators have an elite offense (more than 7 points per 100 possessions better than last year’s) and a top-10 defense to pair with it. The Gators snuff out the 3-ball (eighth nationally in 3-point percentage allowed), have the size to play any style, have the experience to make a run, have the health to make a run, have the backcourt play to get hot, and have one of the best shot-creators in the entire field.
Thomas Haugh (sixth nationally in EvanMiya.com‘s player ratings) and Alex Condon are future NBA guys in the frontcourt. Alijah Martin and Will Richard are reliable guards in the backcourt. Walter Clayton Jr., off consecutive 20-point, 8-assist games, can be the best player on any floor he steps on.
Florida has been the most balanced team this season. Three of its 4 losses were in tight games. The fourth was an outlier result on the road. (I’d consider the 30-point home win over UT the same.)
Auburn has gone one-and-done at the SEC Tournament 5 times under Pearl. The Tigers have either made it to the semifinal round or they’ve been knocked out in their opening game. If Florida meets them in the title fight, it’ll be anyone’s game. But I’d take the Gators over anyone else in the field right now.
Bet to consider: Florida +300 to win the SEC Tournament via ESPN Bet
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A 5-8 seed that can make the title game — Texas A&M
Sure, picking the highest-seeded team from this group to make the title game is a bit of a cop-out, but the Aggies have the potential to be an extremely difficult out for teams on short prep time.
The Aggies have a top-10 defense that keeps them in most games. They went through a bit of a skid throughout the back half of February, but have regained their footing heading into the postseason.
In the 83-72 win over Auburn, A&M had 24 offensive rebounds on 37 missed shots. No team in the country attacks the offensive glass with as much tenacity or success as Texas A&M. The Aggies have been a horrible first-shot offense all season long — they rank 314th nationally in effective field goal percentage — and still won 11 games in the SEC.
Texas A&M made a run in this tournament last season before running into Florida. In the 3 games, Wade Taylor IV scored 20, 32, and then 30 points while making 14 of his 34 triples (41.2%). He has that combustible ability in him. And he has a running mate this season in Zhuric Phelps who has proven to be just as capable of carrying an offense.
Bet to consider: Texas A&M +3000 to win the SEC Tournament via ESPN Bet
A 9-16 seed that can make the title game — Vanderbilt
If it’s any indication, Tennessee’s part of the bracket looks, to me, like the place with the most room for chaos. Because Tennessee and Texas A&M are so reliant on other things to lift up otherwise-flawed offenses, a team like Vanderbilt that can dent a scoreboard on its best day can cause issues.
And the Commodores proved throughout SEC play they were a threat to the top teams. Vandy notched wins this season against Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Mizzou. They enter the conference tourney riding a 2-game losing streak and could just as easily lose in their opening-round game against Texas.
I wonder if a Day 1 game against a bad defense lets this offense, which has been sputtering in the last 2 games, find itself again. Texas, the first-round opponent, was 11th in the SEC in adjusted defensive efficiency during league play. Vandy is 25th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency on the year. It doesn’t turn the basketball over, and while it doesn’t generally get many stops from the defense, Vandy does hang its hat on producing live-ball turnovers that fuel its offense.
The Dores have 4 players who have each topped 20 points in a game this season. Forwards Tyler Nickel and Devin McGlockton are a difficult frontcourt pairing for teams with less-athletic bigs to deal with. And guard Jason Edwards has gone for at least 20 in 9 games this year.
Vandy has a dangerous offense if it gets hot. And if you’re going to get in shootouts, better to do so against Texas A&M and Tennessee rather than Mizzou/Florida or Kentucky/Alabama.
Depth and experience also matter most this time of year. Vandy is in the top 40 nationally in bench minutes and in the top 70 in D1 experience. Nine different players see at least 17 minutes a game. And the most-used lineup is an all-upperclassmen group.
One of the biggest concerns with Vandy is the away-from-home record. The Commodores went 2-7 in conference road games this year. But maybe that won’t be an issue considering where the tourney is taking place.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
