The Florida Gators celebrate after defeating the Houston Cougars in the National Championship of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at the Alamodome on April 07, 2025 in San Antonio, Texas.
The SEC’s historic 2024-25 men’s basketball campaign was arguably the best season a single conference has ever had.
The league thrashed the nonconference portion of the schedule, going a staggering 185-23 (a winning percentage of .889); the Big Ten’s 159-37 (.811 winning percentage) was a distant second place. The SEC ended up as the highest-rated conference in KenPom.com’s two and a half decades as college basketball’s most popular advanced rankings source, and the league’s unprecedented run of success to start the season carried over into the postseason.
A staggering 14 of the league’s 16 teams made it into the NCAA Tournament, easily setting records for most bids by a single conference and for highest percentage of teams to receive a bid. Seven of those 14 teams made it to the Sweet 16, four went to the Elite Eight, two reached the Final Four and Florida captured the national championship to cap off the conference’s all-time season.
Conventional wisdom would tell us this level of dominance was a one-time thing, a coincidental product of nearly every league member trending up at the same time. But what if it wasn’t a fluke?
The SEC has handled the shift to an NIL-based world as well as any league in the country, allowing the deep-pocketed member schools to reel in extremely talented rosters.
Plus, nearly every head coaching hire that the league has made has been a great one, and one of the two jobs to turn over this offseason — Texas moving on from Rodney Terry and hiring Sean Miller away from Xavier — is almost inarguably a major upgrade. The other, Texas A&M hiring Samford’s Bucky McMillan after Buzz Williams took the Maryland job, has plenty of upside, though Williams has been a consistent winner in the sport for almost two decades.
Stability on the sidelines is one of the biggest reasons to be optimistic about the SEC’s immediate future. Contrast the league’s current crop of coaches to the ACC, which has recently seen a flurry of retirements of longtime sideline icons: Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Tony Bennett and Jim Boeheim, with Jim Larranaga and Leonard Hamilton bowing out this season.
That “brain drain” has had a clear negative impact on the conference’s basketball strength, and this winter North Carolina and Virginia took a step back while Duke steamrolled the rest of the league in Jon Scheyer’s third year. The SEC’s old guard, on the other hand, isn’t going anywhere. Rick Barnes, Bruce Pearl and John Calipari should all have strong teams once again in 2025-26.
Among the younger coaches, Florida’s Todd Golden and Alabama’s Nate Oats are clear stars, Ole Miss’ Chris Beard has won everywhere he’s been, and Mark Pope looks like he’ll be a fixture at Kentucky for a long time. The Big Ten would also have a strong argument as having the best group of coaches in the country, but the SEC probably has a narrow edge on aggregate.
Of course, any coach will tell you that it takes talented players to win big, and the SEC was flush with them this past season. Three of the five members of the consensus All-America first team hailed from the SEC, and the league’s all-conference squads were loaded with fantastic college players.
Whether the conference will have the same kind of elite top-end talent in 2025-26 is not yet certain. Of the 15 all-conference honorees, only two (Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard and Missouri’s Mark Mitchell) are definitely returning. Two others (Kentucky’s Otega Oweh, Florida’s Alex Condon) could choose to return after testing the NBA Draft process, and Auburn’s Chad Baker-Mazara is currently in the transfer portal.
But the incoming crop of players — via the recruiting class of 2025 and the transfer portal — looks as strong as ever. The league’s incredible depth appears intact for 2025-26.
Though Calipari’s Arkansas is the only team in the top 10 of 247Sports’ recruiting class rankings, the SEC occupies spots 11, 12, 14 and 15. Nine SEC teams sit in the top 25, and 13 of the conference’s 16 schools are in the top 51. Of the three that are not, two — Texas and Texas A&M — changed coaches this spring, helping explain their lack of incoming rookies. The recruiting site On3 paints an even rosier picture: four SEC classes in the top 10, 15 in the top 50. Clearly, reinforcements are on the way from the high school ranks.
Where the SEC has really dominated recently, though, is the all-important transfer portal. Those additions are typically even more ready to contribute immediately than blue-chip freshmen, and even the top SEC teams use the portal to find stars: All three of the aforementioned All-Americans (Auburn’s Johni Broome, Alabama’s Mark Sears and Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr.) started their careers at mid-major schools.
As of this writing, the SEC has two elite incoming transfer classes, with Kentucky (second) and Tennessee (fourth) right at the top of EvanMiya.com’s national rankings. Beyond that, it’s all about balance: 15 of the league’s schools are in the top 54, with only annual powerhouse Alabama coming in outside that range at 66th. The NIL money is flowing, and players are flocking to the SEC as a result.
It’s entirely possible that all 16 schools will enter next year with the expectation of making the NCAA Tournament. Bart Torvik has released the earliest version of his rankings at BartTorvik.com — subject to many changes throughout the offseason, of course — and 15 of the 16 SEC teams are in the top 61, with South Carolina bringing up the rear at 91st.
The SEC has clearly reloaded its considerable talent coffers, and the offseason is not yet over. More talent could be on the way. The conference also has a fantastic stable of coaches capable of converting all of that talent into wins on the court.
Conference supremacy is often cyclical. In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the ACC was the class of the country. For most of the last decade, the Big 12 was college basketball’s standard-bearer. Now, though, the SEC may be entering a golden age. Even if it does not quite reach the heights of 2025’s all-time campaign, the conference looks set up for multiple years of dominance.
Jim Root is a contributing writer for The Athletic covering college basketball. Before joining The Athletic, he started the college basketball website and podcast Three Man Weave in 2015. He has also worked for Sports Illustrated, the Field of 68, The Action Network and other outlets. He’s a graduate of the University of Missouri and originates from the Milwaukee, Wisc., area.
