How good is the SEC? There’s room for debate as UK begins league play.

For all its supposed make-or-break implications, Kentucky’s game at Louisville was more introduction than conclusion. UK Coach John Calipari suggested it served as a mere preview of upcoming challenges on the Southeastern Conference schedule.

“The whole league is ridiculous,” Calipari said. SEC play begins Saturday with UK opening at Alabama.

In promoting SEC basketball after Kentucky beat Louisville 71-58 last Saturday, Calipari continued a familiar theme. SEC coaches have been persistent salesmen trumpeting the quality of their league’s basketball for several years.

At SEC Media Day last summer, Vanderbilt Coach Bryce Drew said that league play would see teams “playing against draft picks on a nightly basis.” Mississippi State Coach Ben Howland said the SEC was “an absolute monster right now.”

The return of more than a dozen players who entered their names in the 2018 NBA Draft (among them PJ Washington), plus the addition of All-Pac 12 strongman Reid Travis as a graduate transfer made the prospect of playing an SEC schedule seem imposing.

But as SEC play is about to begin, there are reasons for a more sobering assessment. And that’s not simply because of season-ending injuries to Jontay Porter of Missouri and freshman Darius Garland of Vanderbilt.

Celebrated statistics maven Ken Pomeroy rates the SEC as the fourth-best conference in college basketball this season. “Some very good teams at the top,” he wrote in an email, “but the middle and bottom of the league is not as strong as the leagues above them.”

Pomeroy judges the Big 12, Big Ten and ACC as better than the SEC.

CBS Sports analyst Jerry Palm’s order is 1. Big Ten, 2. Big 12 and then a “toss up” for third-best between the SEC and ACC. The Big Ten has “remarkable depth” in terms of quality teams, he said.

Overall, SEC teams had a record of 21-23 against opponents from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac 12. Adding the Big East, the record becomes 23-27.

Former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese, now a consultant helping to boost the SEC’s basketball profile, said Kentucky’s victories over North Carolina and Louisville made for a sunnier outlook.

Success by the flagship program “always helps” the perception of a league, he said. “It’s not supposed to make a difference, but I think subconsciously it plays into people’s minds. If your so-called better teams or marquee teams are doing well, people just assume your league is doing well.”

Tranghese said Duke and North Carolina can similarly elevate how the ACC is perceived. Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State have the same effect on Big Ten basketball, he said.

Tennessee, which is the mostly highly rated SEC team at No. 3 this week, also helped make the job of promoting league basketball easier by beating then No. 1 Gonzaga on Dec. 9. “That’s what you call an exposure win,” Tranghese said. “Everybody saw it.”

Even with Kentucky on the upswing, Tranghese qualified his assessment of the SEC. “I look at it short term and long term,” he said.

Beginning on a positive note, Tranghese said, “Long term, I’m excited because I think the coaching now in the SEC is as good as any league in the country. I don’t think you’re going into a building and stealing games from coaches. It’s just not happening because I think the level (of coaching) is really, really high.”

As for short term, youth and inexperience still frequently appear on SEC rosters, he said.

During the pre-conference portion of the schedule, the SEC lost 13 of 18 games against teams ranked in the top 25 by The Associated Press media poll and USA Today coaches poll. That included a 2-7 record against opponents in the top 10.

And of the five victories, two came against opponents no longer ranked: Auburn over No. 25 Washington on Nov. 9 and LSU over No. 24 Furman on Dec. 21.

SEC teams had also lost 17 games to unranked opponents from outside the so-called Power Five conferences. Eight of those losses came on SEC home courts. Those included South Carolina losing to Stony Brook and Wofford, Texas A&M losing to UC Irvine and Texas Southern, Alabama losing to Georgia State and Arkansas losing to Western Kentucky.

“That’s part of maturing and becoming better,” Tranghese said.

A record eight SEC teams played in the 2018 NCAA Tournament. At SEC Media Day last fall, the coaches saw ever brighter vistas ahead.

“Could be another year (of) eight, nine, 10 teams,” Alabama Coach Avery Johnson said. “And we hope we’re one of them. We’re not just a football conference anymore. We’re really serious about basketball.”

In his most recent calculation, ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi had six SEC teams playing in the 2019 NCAA Tournament. That included Florida in the preliminary “First Four” in Dayton.

Lunardi had more teams from the Big Ten (10), ACC (seven) and Big 12 (seven) in his bracket.

Next game

No. 13 Kentucky at Alabama

When: 1 p.m. EST Saturday

TV: ESPN

SEC records this season

Mississippi State, 12-1

Tennessee, 11-1

Auburn, 11-2

Kentucky, 10-2

Ole Miss, 10-2

LSU, 10-3

Alabama, 9-3

Arkansas, 9-3

Missouri, 9-3

Vanderbilt, 9-3

Florida, 8-4

Georgia, 8-4

Texas A&M, 6-5

South Carolina, 5-7

This story was originally published December 31, 2018 at 3:52 PM.