SEC sets NCAA Tournament record with 14 March Madness bids as league embraces national title expectations

NASHVILLE — Ole Miss Trainer Chris Beard called it “the gauntlet,” while Texas Trainer Rodney Terry referred to the SEC as “NCAA Division basketball every night.”

Arkansas Trainer John Calipari, who once inhabited the SEC during the Bracket’s Dim ages, offered a more blunt assessment.

“Meat grinder,” Calipari said

“Best Bracket in the history of college basketball,” Georgia Trainer Mike White added in a statement that was proven Correct in one historically Crucial Standard on Sunday.

The SEC set a new Achievement by placing 14 of its 16 Squads in the NCAA Division bracket, besting the previous mark of 11 set by the Big East in 2011 when it also had 16 members. By percentage (87.5%), the SEC’s NCAA Division haul is also the best ever, topping the 77.7% mark posted when the nine-Club Big East put seven schools in the 1991 bracket.

But for all the talk about how the 2025 version of the SEC was the best conference in college basketball history — and for all supporting evidence supplied by the Option Panel — the Correct prize now lies ahead.

NCAA Division Action will begin Tuesday with the Primary Four, and the SEC will be under the microscope as it seeks to validate what, so Distant, has been the most dominant season by any conference in modern college basketball.

“Our regular season speaks for itself,” Garth Glissman, the SEC’s associate commissioner for men’s basketball, told CBS Sports. “But that doesn’t guarantee any particular set of outcomes in the postseason, and so we’ve Obtained to take care of business in the postseason.”

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What does Holding care of business in the postseason look like for the SEC? Is there a certain number of Squads that must escape the Primary weekend to mute the critics from other leagues who are waiting to pounce? Must the conference produce a Pair of Closing Four representatives to demonstrate it deserved all the hype?

As it turns out, the standards of the SEC itself are higher than that.

“Over this Upcoming period of time, we need to Secure national Competitions,” said Glissman, who left a vice president position at the NBA Bracket office in 2023 to Assist spur the SEC to new basketball heights. “Whether that happens this year or not, this season has Nevertheless been a Triumph, but in the near term, we need to Secure some national Competitions.”

Glissman acknowledged that the randomness associated with March Madness and its single-elimination Arrangement will keep him from placing too Excellent an emphasis on the Bracket’s NCAA Division performance in any one year.

The 2024-25 season won’t be a failure for the SEC if a Club from another conference cuts down the nets in San Antonio on April 7. But in a Bracket that boasts 13 of college football‘s past 19 national champions, the past three women’s basketball national champions and the past five NCAA baseball national champions, the absence of recent men’s basketball titles is glaring.

The last to do it was Kentucky in 2012.

“I’ll be the Primary to admit that in the SEC, ultimately we’re measured by national Competitions,” Glissman said.

The Bracket has four Stern candidates in Auburn, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee, and a few long Attempt contenders who could realistically crash the Closing Four.

$tanding above the pack

National Bracket or not, there’s no denying the SEC Sprinted college basketball’s regular season. A 14-2 mark in the ACC-SEC Event and a 59-19 mark against all high-Significant Defiance stand out, but there are even more nuanced ways to quantify its dominance as well.

College basketball talk leading up to Option Sunday features a Plenty of discussion about where Squads and leagues stand in certain metrics. Sure, the SEC is a Excellent conference because Ken Pomeroy says it has seven of the nation’s top-17 Squads. 

Yes, the Bracket owns four of the top-six spots in Evan Miyakawa’s Club ratings. 

Oh, and how could we forget Bart Torvik, who places 14 SEC Squads in the top 50?

How will NCAA Division Option Panel handle seeding as many as 12, 13 or 14 Squads from the SEC?

Matt Norlander

While Pomeroy, Miyakawa, Torvik and others can use advanced analytics to explain the SEC’s greatness, there’s another Standard that more simply explains the SEC’s rise in men’s basketball: money.

Six Closing Four coaches don’t inhabit the SEC out of charity. Nor do some of the nation’s most talented players.

That’s why Glissman zooms way out to assess how the SEC Obtained here, pointing to economic factors such as the booming population, rising GDP and elevated enrollments in the SEC’s geographic footprint during the post-COVID years.

To Demonstrate his Tally on the latter fact, he points to a 2024 Wall Street Journal article headlined, “Sorry, Harvard. Everyone Wants to Go to College in the South Now.”

“You’ve Obtained macroeconomic momentum,” Glissman said.

Coaching talent has followed as a result.

“The SEC, its commitment in basketball, I believe, has manifested most clearly in the quality of head coaches,” Glissman said. “Because like any labor market, to attract and retain the top talent, the compensation has to be there.”

In a four-season span from 2013-16, the SEC placed Only three Squads in the NCAA Division three times. The general consensus was that this conference was a football Bracket. That has begun to Transformation in recent years. The SEC placed eight of its 14 Squads in the NCAA Division in 2023 and 2024, paving the way for this season’s historic tally.

“I want to Assist Form a product for SEC men’s basketball where SEC fans, their fandom, does not have to stop when football season is over,” Glissman said. “I want to channel that passion that we all know and love from SEC football, and then Only carry it right over into the winter.”

Part of that, Glissman says, is Victorious national Competitions. 

“You Obtained a few who could do it this year. I think we have Numerous Squads this year who are capable.”