Who needs football? This year’s SEC in the conversation for strongest men’s basketball conference … ever

John Calipari recently likened playing in the SEC this season to sitting down at a poker table full of sharks. The Arkansas coach that he scanned the league standings from top to bottom and didn’t find a single automatic win.

“Then I started thinking, ‘Are we the win?’” Calipari deadpanned. “Maybe they’re looking, saying, ‘We’re playing Arkansas. Thank God for that.’”

Calipari surely isn’t the only SEC men’s basketball coach apprehensive about the 18-game gauntlet ahead. The SEC isn’t just the sport’s clear-cut top league this season. It’s building an argument as one of the strongest in recent memory.

As of Monday morning, SEC teams have a combined record of 144-20 this season. The SEC’s winning percentage of .878 towers above men’s basketball’s other four power conferences, the Big 12 (.743), the Big Ten (.742), the Big East (.689) and the ACC (.635).

It’s not like the SEC has feasted on nothing but cupcakes either. SEC teams are 55-17 against power-conference opponents and 17-8 against AP Top 25 teams. That’s already four more regular-season, non-conference Top 25 wins than any other league has ever amassed in one season, .

Tennessee retained the No. 1 spot in after escaping at the buzzer at Illinois on Saturday despite leading scorer Chaz Lanier and standout point guard Zakai Zeigler fouling out. Auburn tightened its white-knuckle grip on No. 1 in every advanced metric on Saturday with a 91-53 demolition of Ohio State.

All 16 SEC teams appear in the top 68 in . Twelve SEC teams are inside KenPom’s top 40. The league put Tennessee, Auburn, Kentucky, Alabama and Florida in the top seven of the new AP Top 25 and had Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Ole Miss crack the top 17. Of the SEC’s 16 teams, only LSU, Vanderbilt and South Carolina didn’t receive votes.

The numbers get more jaw-dropping the deeper into the weeds you go. The SEC is 50-19 in top-100 quality games so far this season, per Bart Torvik’s ratings. No other conference is even within striking distance of .500.

The SEC’s remarkable showing in non-conference play raises the question how this iteration of the league compares historically. Could the 2024-25 SEC be the strongest men’s basketball conference in recent history? Or, at the very least, one of them?

It would be a mistake to crown the SEC without seeing how it fares during the final two weeks of non-conference play and in the NCAA tournament, but the league’s glorious start has vaulted it into the conversation.

Torvik since 2008 by using the average rating of every team in a league. No other league has rated as highly as the 2024-25 SEC on December 16 of a given year, not even the 2010-11 Big East that sent a record 11 teams to the NCAA tournament or the 2017-18 Big 12 that very nearly had eight of its 10 teams secure bids.

Pomeroy has used similar methods to since 1997. So far only the 1996-97 ACC and the 2003-04 ACC outrate this year’s SEC.

That the SEC is so dominant would have been difficult to fathom a decade ago when the league had Kentucky, Florida and little else. The football-first SEC sent just three teams to the NCAA tournament in 2013, 2014 and 2016. In 2013, SEC schools went a combined 15-33 against the other major conferences and had a losing record against each of them.

How did the SEC go from basketball laughingstock to powerhouse?

Go back to 2016 when SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and did something about it by hiring former longtime Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese as a men’s basketball consultant.

Over the next few years, SEC schools began scheduling smarter, hiring proven head coaches and improving their facilities. It started with Tennessee taking a chance on Rick Barnes, Auburn changing the trajectory of its program by bringing aboard Bruce Pearl and Alabama and Mississippi State swinging for the fences (and missing) with Avery Johnson and Ben Howland. Later, Texas A&M splurged on Buzz Williams, Alabama hit a home run with Nate Oats and Ole Miss gambled on Chris Beard. Then there was the biggest splash of all last spring: John Calipari to Arkansas.

The SEC’s surplus of football money became an even bigger difference maker as the transfer portal produced unfettered free agency and the loosening of NIL rules turned recruiting battles into bidding wars. NIL collectives armed SEC coaches with enviable war chests, aiding their pursuit of elite freshmen and prized transfers.

For the past four years, the SEC has finished no better than second but no worse than fourth among the power conferences. This year, the league has taken a huge leap, aided by an influx of proven transfers and the return of veterans Mark Sears, Johni Broome, Zakai Zeigler and Wade Taylor IV from last year’s first-team all-SEC team.

Pomeroy tracks the average number of full Division I seasons played by a team’s current roster, weighted by minutes played. Ole Miss, Kentucky and Texas A&M nationally in Division I experience this season. Auburn, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee are all in the top 25.

All the SEC’s early-season success could result in a record number of NCAA bids on Selection Sunday. Joe Lunardi’s has 12 SEC schools in the NCAA tournament. That would break the 2011 Big East’s record if it holds.

Whatever number of NCAA bids the SEC secures, the conference must do a better job taking advantage this season to validate its early success. Five of the SEC’s eight 2024 NCAA tournament teams failed to survive the round of 64, not exactly the show of strength Sankey was looking for when he argued for tourney expansion to create more bids for his league and other deep-pocketed power conferences.

This year, the SEC is well-positioned to send a handful of teams to the NCAA tournament’s second weekend and perhaps end its 13-year national title drought.

Not so long ago, this league was Kentucky, Florida and a bunch of minnows. Now, as Calipari said last week, “It doesn’t matter who you play. You can lose.”