How much emphasis should Mark Pope put on the SEC Tournament?
If you missed it, the big news in men’s college basketball media last week was made by ESPN.
The all-sports network announced that it was moving its number one college hoops broadcasting team, play-by-play announcer Dan Shulman, analyst Jay Bilas and sideline reporter Jess Sims, from its traditional perch calling the ACC Tournament and will instead assign the trio to work this week’s SEC Tournament.
Though jarring in the historical context, ESPN’s decision reflects the diverging competitive arcs of SEC and ACC men’s basketball in 2024-25.
Consider:
▪ Men’s basketball teams from the traditionally football-mad SEC have gone a robust 30-3 this season in head-to-head matchups with teams from the historically hoops-centric ACC.
▪ In the NCAA’s NET Rankings (through games of Thursday), 14 of the 16 Southeastern Conference teams were ranked No. 50 or higher — and all 16 SEC teams were in the top 88.
▪ Conversely, there were only five ACC teams in the Top 50 of the NET, although one of them, Duke, was No. 1. However, 10 of the 18 ACC teams were ranked between 89 and 230.
▪ In ESPN.com’s most recent NCAA Tournament bracketology, Joe Lunardi projected 12 SEC teams in the bracket of 68 and had two other Southeastern Conference teams, league newcomers Texas and Oklahoma, among the first four teams out of the field.
▪ Conversely, Lunardi projected only three ACC teams — Duke, Clemson and Louisville — in the NCAA Tournament. He had three other Atlantic Coast Conference teams, North Carolina, SMU and Wake Forest, among the first eight teams out of the field.
Looking ahead to this year’s SEC Tournament, it is easy to wonder if the tourney field might be too strong for the league’s own good.
In an appearance on Birmingham radio station WJOX on Jan. 27, Jay Bilas told co-hosts Cole Cubelic and Greg McElroy that “winning the SEC Tournament is going to be harder than winning the national championship because you’re doing it day after day after day (in the SEC tourney) ... and playing better teams throughout the course of (the SEC Tournament) than you play in the course of the NCAA Tournament.”
Whether the teams that make deep runs in this year’s Southeastern Conference Tournament will have any petrol left in the tank for the ensuing tourney that actually matters will be one of the most fascinating storylines to watch in 2025 March Madness.
Looking from a wide scope, since the NCAA Tournament bracket expanded to at least 64 teams in 1985, there have been 39 national champions crowned (remember, there was no NCAA tourney in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic).
Of those 39 NCAA title teams, only 16 won their conference tournaments (three of the other champions won from leagues that did not have conference tournaments at that time).
In the 10 most recent NCAA tourneys, the eventual national champion entered the Big Dance off a conference tourney title only three times — Villanova in 2018, Kansas in 2022 and Connecticut last season.
Yet if recent men’s college basketball history suggests winning a league tournament is often not a precursor to claiming the national championship, University of Kentucky men’s hoops history reflects the opposite.
Since the SEC Tournament returned from dormancy in 1979, nine Kentucky teams have advanced to the NCAA tourney Final Four in that time frame.
Of those nine UK Final Four squads, six won the SEC Tournament — and the other three advanced to the finals of the league tourney.
In assessing how much emphasis to place on winning the league tournament, a Kentucky coach also has to factor UK fans into the equation. For good or bad, the Big Blue Nation loves the SEC tourney, as evidenced by Kentucky backers having so long dominated the SEC Tournament at the turnstiles.
The fact that UK has not won more than one game in an individual SEC Tournament since 2018 grated on many Cats fans and added to the discontent that formed in the final years of John Calipari’s Kentucky coaching tenure.
At the Rupp Arena pep rally last spring that served as Mark Pope’s introduction as Kentucky coach, the new man made a point of saying UK would henceforth emphasize success in Nashville, the primary site of the SEC Tournament.
Pope’s first SEC tourney as top Cat will come against a stacked field, the strength of which no other Kentucky coach has ever faced.
Given how little postseason tournament success Kentucky has enjoyed in this decade — UK is 1-4 in SEC Tournament contests and 1-3 in NCAA tourney games in the 2020s — any postseason success for the Wildcats in Pope’s first season will be meaningful.
