The 2024-2025 SEC has cemented themselves as the best performing conference in the history of college basketball. They had a record-breaking 14 teams be invited to participate in the March Madness tournament. With that being said, we still have to judge them on their overall performance in the big dance, but as of right now, they are considered an absolute force to be reckoned with.

Just some stats to back this up:

• The SEC went 59-19 against the other power conferences this season. That’s good for a winning percentage of .756, which is unheard of. BTW that includes the SEC’s worst teams (there isn’t many) so don’t think we’re only talking about the cream of the crop. The SEC was great top to to bottom.

• They have 4 out of the top 7 nationally ranked teams. Florida, Tennessee, Auburn and Alabama are all legitimate title contenders. At one point they were 4 of the top 6, but Alabama’s play has slowed a bit as we end the year.

• The ACC (which features Duke and North Carolina among others) used to dominate the SEC. From 2002-2019, the SEC had a winning percentage of .441 vs. the ACC. However, since then their winning percentage has jumped to .676 against the ACC. The tides are turning.

So where did this insane shift come from all of a sudden?

Would you believe me if I said the answer was football? The SEC is a football conference and their teams make A LOT of money. If you want the short answer, they dumped some of their football fortune into basketball.

Why all of a sudden though? Well, the transfer portal rule changes have helped the SEC. For those of you who don’t know, the NCAA changed the transfer regulations for players to change schools using the portal once without sitting out a year after the transfer. So now, all of these huge football schools with tons of money have the opportunity to pay players through NIL and they have the transfer portal changes working in their favour.

So what does this mean for the big dance? Basically, I don’t think anyone besides an SEC team (or the other #1 seeds) has much chance to cut down the nets in a few weeks time. But we shall see! Tons of teams other teams are gaining betting traction too.

Best of luck on your brackets! Stay tuned for my picks as we draw near.

-E