After recently winning a 10th national championship in college football’s last 14 seasons, the Southeastern Conference appears to be reclaiming an underdog role in men’s basketball.
The SEC had four Associated Press top-15 teams entering last season’s NCAA tournament – Tennessee, Kentucky, LSU and Auburn – and all four reached the Sweet 16. Auburn advanced to the Final Four and followed that with a 15-0 start to this season to earn Bruce Pearl’s Tigers a No. 4 ranking, but lopsided losses last week at Alabama and at Florida have resulted in the SEC currently not having any top-10 teams.
“Last year, there were four great teams in our league,” Pearl said Saturday in a news conference. “Kentucky was Final Four good with two lottery picks. Tennessee was dominant all year long. LSU won the league. We were probably the fourth-best team, and we got to the Final Four. Mississippi State was really good, and Florida had a great run at the end of the year.
“I don’t know if anybody now is as good as those top four or five teams, and that’s not a knock or a criticism on the league being down. We just lost a ton of players to the draft, and several of those left early.”
The SEC’s top four teams last season all were top-five seeds in their respective NCAA tournament regions, but the league may be strained to provide more than one top-five seed this year.