How many SEC teams made the NCAA Tournament this year?

Throughout the college basketball regular season, the SEC proved it was a conference as good as we've ever seen. The SEC saw at least a half-dozen teams ranked inside the AP Top 25 for most of the season and produced some excellent teams, including multiple contenders for the 1-line in the 2025 NCAA Tournament.

The weakness of the NCAA Tournament bubble and the fact that the league kept feeding each other Quad 1 opportunities led to some historic projections for March Madness, with a remarkable 14 of the league's 16 teams having a shot to make the field entering Champ Week. The end result, however, did see history made from the center of the college basketball world.

How many SEC teams made the NCAA Tournament?

After a tremendous regular season, the SEC did make history as it did send 14 teams to the NCAA Tournament. The previous record of bids from one conference came in 2011, when the old Big East sent 11 teams dancing, so the fact that only LSU and South Carolina missed the field is a remarkable accomplishment from the SEC.

The lack of strong bubble teams and bid thieves opened the door for teams towards the bottom of the conference (like Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas) to do enough work in Nashville to earn a ticket to dance. There are also true national title contenders throughout the field as Auburn, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee have all demonstrated the ability to beat top-level competition throughout the season.

SEC breakdown for the NCAA Tournament

The top of the bracket is littered with SEC teams as 6 of them landed inside the Top 3 seed lines: Auburn, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Kentucky. That kind of representation near the top of the bracket is almost unheard of but the SEC earned it as its members also did strong work outside of the conference, securing big wins against contenders everywhere.

Auburn landed the top overall seed but were handed a potentially dangerous 8-9 game with Louisville, which played very well out of the ACC, or Creighton, which is better than its record indicates. A date with Tom Izzo's Michigan State side in the Elite Eight would be a tremendous test for the Tigers to reach their second Final Four in the Bruce Pearl era.

Florida got the other 1-seed out of the SEC thanks to their dominant showing in the SEC Tournament but were handed the hardest path to the Final Four. Having St. John's, Texas Tech and Maryland as their 2-4 seeds is a big challenge for the Gators to navigate, as well as a potential Round of 32 matchup with UCONN, the reigning two-time national champions.

Alabama and Tennessee landed on the 2-line, each landing a potentially dangerous Round of 32 opponent (Saint Mary's or Vanderbilt for Alabama while Tennessee could deal with UCLA or Utah State). The path to the Final Four would be more difficult for the Crimson Tide, however, as they would likely need to go through Cooper Flagg (presuming health) and Duke while the Volunteers would get to go through a Houston team that did win 30 games but had no major non-conference results.

Kentucky's early season work helped the Wildcats earn a 3-seed, but their Round of 32 opponent (especially if it is Illinois or Texas) has the potential to expose their shortcomings on the defensive end of the floor. Texas A&M's 4-seed path feels limited at the Sweet 16 if they run into Auburn again but they do have some potential landmines on the way there in the form of Ivy League champ Yale and either Big Ten champ Michigan or dangerous Cinderella UC San Diego in the Round of 32.

The SEC's 6-seeds, Missouri and Ole Miss, both look like potential upset victims in the first round. Drake won 30 games and is one of the nation's most complete teams, which is a challenge for the Tigers, while the Rebels will be awaiting either a North Carolina team that the predictive metrics think is capable of a second-weekend run or a San Diego State side that beat Houston in non-conference play.

Of the league's 8-9 matchups, Mississippi State got a much better draw with an underachieving Baylor side than Georgia, who has to take on a Gonzaga team that is much better than your average 8-seed. Oklahoma falls in the middle as UCONN has shown flashes of brilliance but is not always capable of delivering a consistent performance.

Vanderbilt landing Saint Mary's as its 7-seed is a brutal draw since the Gaels are a team that could've been at least a line higher based on predictive metrics. Texas is just happy to be in the field as a First Four participant and has a winnable game against Xavier before getting a shot at 6-seed Illinois in the first round.

SEC players to watch in March Madness

The best SEC player entering the NCAA Tournament is Auburn's Johni Broome, who was an easy choice for SEC Player of the Year and is in a neck-and-neck race with Duke's Cooper Flagg for the National Player of the Year awards. Broome has averaged a double-double for the Tigers, racking up 18.6 points per game and 10.6 rebounds a night, and has a good running mate in All SEC-Third Team member Chad Baker-Mazara.

Florida has a budding star of its own in guard Walter Clayton Jr, who began his career with Rick Pitino at Iona before going to another level with the Gators. Clayton led the Gators with 17.2 points per game this year and showed out in the NCAA Tournament last season, putting up 33 points and delivering numerous clutch baskets in a first-round loss to Colorado.

Alabama and Tennessee also carry experienced guards into March as Mark Sears and Zakai Zegler put up strong years to guide their teams to strong seeds in the bracket. Texas A&M also boasts a do-it-all guard in Wade Taylor IV, who is capable of putting the Aggies on his back and stealing a game in the tournament.

How has the SEC done recently in the NCAA Tournament?

The SEC has a bit of an underrated title drought with the league's last championship coming back in 2012 when John Calipari's Kentucky Wildcats (led by future NBA star Anthony Davis) won it all. There have been plenty of deep March Madness runs, however, including Final Four trips for Alabama (2024), Auburn (2019), South Carolina (2017) and Kentucky (2015) in the past decade.

One SEC team that hasn't quite lived up to the March Madness hype is Tennessee, which has been a tournament regular under head coach Rick Barnes but has wasted several opportunities to make their first-ever Final Four on the men's side. Last year's NCAA Tournament will go down as a severe disappointment for the Volunteers, who played Purdue tough in the Elite Eight only to get beaten by Zach Edey and the Boilermakers.

Perhaps the most stunning run for an SEC team came from South Carolina in 2017, which upset three ranked teams (including Duke in a second-round game played in Greenville and league-mate Florida in the Elite Eight) to reach the Final Four. That run ended with a loss to Gonzaga in the national semifinals but is still the high point of the Gamecocks' men's basketball history.

Can an SEC Team win the NCAA Tournament?

This rates as an emphatic yes, and it doesn't tie to the fact that the SEC produced over 20 percent of the field. With four legitimate title contenders and another tier of teams that can reasonably make the Final Four, there is no reason to doubt that the SEC can snap its dozen-year title drought with the 2025 edition of March Madness.

The reason to question whether the streak may continue is due to how much of a grind it has become for SEC teams to play the conference season, where they were essentially playing tournament-caliber competition every night. While the idea of iron sharpening iron could apply here, there is also a chance that some of the SEC's top contenders got burned out from that grind and are bounced earlier than you would think in the dance.