Conference realignment has done a doozy on men's college basketball. We are at the time of the year where every win and lost is magnified tenfold because of the shrinking runway in front of us. With the Pac-12 going away and the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC all growing in size, there are fewer and fewer leagues that will be getting multiple teams in now. Look no further than the SEC getting 13 teams in...
While we await next week's games to set the field heading into the conference tournaments, Joe Lunardi's latest bracketology update sets us up for as many as 13 or 14 SEC teams making the tournament now. While Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Texas A&M and Kentucky are all jockeying for top-four seeds, our attention immediately goes to who is hovering around the bubble.
Heading into this week, Lunardi had surging Georgia in the last four in, along with inconsistent Arkansas and struggling Oklahoma, with fading Texas on the outside looking in as one of the first four out. If I did the math correctly, with 13 teams in, that would leave Texas, LSU and South Carolina as the only SEC teams projected not to make the tournament this year. The latter two are below .500 overall.
Here is what Lunardi tweeted out on Sunday morning after Saturday's games all reached completion.
— Joe Lunardi (@ESPNLunardi) March 2, 2025
The non-conference has to be buoying teams like Oklahoma who are well-below .500 in SEC play.
Joe Lunardi's latest bracketology update reeks of major SEC bias
While I actively root for one of the teams on the bubble in Georgia, a team that has not made the conference tournament in a decade, I am struggling to see how more than 12 teams make the tournament out of the SEC. With major conference realignment, a dozen feels somewhat right to me. It will come down to how well these four teams perform this weekend and in the SEC tournament.
I may not be an expert in understanding all that goes into what makes a good win or a bad loss in college basketball, but I also understand how non-conference play can make or show how a conference looks in the macro sense once league play has run its course. One would assume teams in leagues that crushed it in the non-conference are superior this season to those that did not.
Ultimately, I struggle to see how teams who win a third of their league's games being tournament teams. I understand that we have 68 spots to fill in this bracket, but that there are also not that many high-quality teams. Some teams go on runs, but we usually end up seeing those at the top of the bracket being the ones to survive and advance. Let's focus on who can win it, not who can make it.
The right number of bids for the SEC is closer to 11 or 12, than it is to 13, or let alone even 14 teams...