Ad Disclosure
The anti-SEC crowd finished opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament silently eating crow
Published:
As Ole Miss walked off the court with an upset victory against Iowa State, Kevin Harlan didn’t even wait until the handshake line to say it on the TruTV broadcast.
“The SEC now has 7 teams in the Sweet 16, the most for any conference ever at that stage of the NCAA Tournament.”
Anti-SEC narratives be damned. It was a rough weekend for those when the conference followed up its record-setting 14 NCAA Tournament bids by breaking the ACC’s 2016 record and putting, well, you know … what Harlan said.
There were moments when the “SEC is overrated” crowd puffed its chest. After all, 4-seed Texas A&M lost to 5-seed Michigan and 6-seed Mizzou fell to 11-seed Drake. If you were really angling for some anti-SEC content, you got to push your narrative after Baylor beat Mississippi State in the 8-9 matchup on Friday. Those, however, were the only instances of the weekend in which an SEC team lost to a lower-seeded team.
That’s it, though? That’s all that the anti-SEC crowd got to cling, too?
Where was the 3-14 upset with a team like Kentucky? And what about Tennessee enduring some horrendous scoring drought and failing to get out of the opening weekend? Shoot, we couldn’t even get John Calipari missing out on the Sweet 16 for the 5th consecutive year? What gives?
What gave was the notion that the SEC was fraudulent. It wasn’t that. The “season-long hype train” wasn’t just some ESPN narrative. It was a .889 nonconference winning percentage (the best by any conference since the 1983-84 ACC), a record 14 SEC teams earning a spot in the AP Top 25 at least once and a 14-2 ACC-SEC challenge victory that aged like a Tuscany red.
Of course, if the SEC had puked on its shoes during opening weekend — like it did last year — the national bashing would’ve been warranted. And to be fair, if the SEC comes up short of winning its first national title since 2012, that won’t be lost on the anti-SEC crowd.
The SEC’s lack of national titles since 2012 Kentucky was at the root of that skepticism. It’s fair to be skeptical of a conference that hasn’t had a team win a Final Four game since 2014. At that point, we hadn’t even had a football game in the Playoff era yet. But for a football-focused conference, this was a monumental opportunity to actually change the basketball discussion.
So far, so good.
Sure, it helped that the SEC didn’t lose any of its top-5 seeded teams (No. 1 Florida, No. 1 Auburn, No. 2 Alabama, No. 2 Tennessee and No. 3 Kentucky). Ultimately, the Final Four presence and national title drought will be what defines this historic 2025 run for the SEC.
But on opening weekend, Arkansas and Ole Miss might’ve done the most SEC flexing by beating basketball bluebloods. Calipari’s revenge tour consisted of knocking off 2 of the sport’s best coaches of the last 30 years, both of which he did as an underdog (he hadn’t beaten a higher-seeded team in the NCAA Tournament since 2014). And if the goalposts were moved to discount a down Kansas team, surely the win against 2-seed St. John’s silenced plenty of Arkansas skeptics.
What about Ole Miss? Like, the program that hadn’t been to the Sweet 16 since 2001 was a bit of an afterthought with polarizing play-in UNC on tap in the opener. Not only did Chris Beard’s squad take care of business there, but it turned around and ran a respected Iowa State squad out of the gym.
The whole debate was about teams like Ole Miss and Arkansas, who went a combined 18-18 in SEC play. The anti-SEC angst was rooted in the belief that the conference got far too much leniency. Never mind the fact that Ole Miss beat 3 eventual-NCAA Tournament teams in nonconference play while Arkansas beat 2.
This was about narratives, not context. For the SEC, it was ultimately about ensuring that a conference wasn’t pushed aside during the sport’s most engaged weekend of the season. After earning all those NCAA Tournament bids, turning them into a significant Sweet 16 presence was item No. 2 on the agenda.
Item No. 3 in turning the skeptics into believers? Multiple Final Four teams.
It’s the 40-year anniversary of the Big East putting 3 teams in the Final Four, which ended with an intra-conference national championship. The only other instance of an intra-conference national championship game since that 1985 classic was the 1988 title game with Kansas and Oklahoma. The SEC’s 7 remaining squads have a long way to go to make that a reality 37 years later. But again, nobody has ever been set up better to make that happen than the 2025 SEC.
If Harlan’s SEC crowning on Sunday night ends up being the last flex-worthy moment for the conference in 2025, you’ll hear about it. Shoot, you’ll probably hear the anti-SEC crowd claim that the conference is overrated with each remaining loss, including the Tennessee-Kentucky showdown in the Sweet 16. That’s reality.
So, too, is that 6 of the 8 Sweet 16 games will feature at least 1 SEC team. For a conference that had 8 teams in the Sweet 16 from 2021-24, that’s no small turnaround. When the ACC had that then-record 6 teams in the Sweet 16 in the 2016 NCAA Tournament, the SEC had 3 total bids. Like, in the entire field. Nine years later, the ACC was down to 1 team before the evening window on Saturday of opening weekend while the SEC was on its way to setting a new mark.
These things are cyclical. But finally, it appears, that the SEC’s time has come.
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.
