SEC is primed for success in March Madness, upending conference power structure

A typical NCAA men’s basketball season consists of domination by mostly Big 12, ACC and Big Ten teams, with the occasional outliers from the Big East. The last 10 NCAA champions have come from those four conferences and you have to go back to Kentucky in 2012 to find a champion from the SEC.

SEC is the nation's dominant football conference but when it comes to basketball, you can usually count on the SEC being left in the dust — even with a legacy program like Kentucky in the heart of the conference. Not this year, though. The last few years have seen a shift in conference dominance over college basketball.

The 2022-23 NCAA Tournament saw a record eight SEC teams — tied with the Big Ten for most schools — up from six SEC teams in 2021-22. As of Feb. 28, the Southeastern Conference has six teams ranked in the top 25, with just four top-25 teams from the Big 12, two from the ACC, three from the Big East, and two from the Big Ten.

Who are the best teams in the SEC this season?

From the SEC, we have No. 4 Tennessee, No. 13 Alabama, No. 11 Auburn, No. 16 Kentucky, No. 18 South Carolina and No. 24 Florida, and these teams continue to climb in the rankings with stellar performances and close scores both in- and out-of-conference.

SEC basketball is, no doubt, a very different game from other Power 5 conferences, down to its typically less aggressive and defensive style of play. In general, the Southeastern Conference historically does not seem to produce the same kind of talent that the Big Ten or ACC does, which can be seen in its comparatively small number of NBA draft prospects, based on Chris Kline's latest Big Board here at FanSided.

With that said, the last three years have seen a more competitive game coming out of the SEC, and this has translated into this conference’s ability to succeed in March Madness, where it is historically the underdog. Looking at Ken Pom's rankings, we find two SEC schools among the top six offenses in the country (Alabama and Kentucky), two more among the top six defenses in the country (Tennessee and Auburn) and three among the top 10 in overall efficiency margin (Tennessee, Auburn and Alabama).

With these stats alone, this could be the year the SEC sends the most teams of any conference to March Madness and, perhaps, the most contenders.

As the 2023-24 season progresses, the Southeastern Conference is only growing stronger and hungrier for bids in the NCAA tournament. Could we be witnessing a new era of SEC dominance in college basketball?