Based off the freshly-revealed 2024 NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket, this was the Southeastern Conference's greatest regular season.
The SEC has eight representatives in the 68-team field for the third time, but this is the first occasion in which four of the eight are seeded fourth or higher in their respective regions. Tennessee is the second seed in the Midwest Region, while Kentucky is seeded third in the South, Alabama fourth in the West and Auburn fourth in the East.
Auburn coach Bruce Pearl spoke to the league's strength Sunday afternoon after the Tigers routed Florida 86-67 in Nashville to provide his program a second SEC tournament title to go along with a pair of regular-season crowns during the past seven seasons.
"Winning the championship this year means even more because the league was so good," Pearl said in a news conference. "We've won a few of these, and I think this was the most special. This league was that good."
So is this the year SEC teams finally go from talking the talk to walking the walk in NCAA postseason play?
Since the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA tournament due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, the SEC has been much more about quantity than quality in the 68-team extravaganza. The league is just 21-20 in NCAA tourney games the past three tournaments with no trips to the Final Four.
The SEC didn't have a team reach the Elite Eight last March, when Alabama was the event's top overall seed but stumbled in the Sweet 16 against San Diego State.
Tennessee was the fourth seed in an East Region that was wide open after 16th-seeded Farleigh Dickinson stunned top-seeded Purdue, but the Volunteers couldn't capitalize, getting upset by ninth-seeded Florida Atlantic in the Sweet 16. The Vols are 3-3 in NCAA tournament games the past three years, losing to 12th-seeded Oregon State and to 11th-seeded Michigan before falling to the Owls.
"This league is incredible," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said Sunday night in a news conference. "A couple of weeks ago, they were talking about nine teams or maybe 10 that were still in the mix. The fact we ended up with what we did is remarkable, because we all beat up on each other at the end of the year. This league has improved so much, and I'm really happy for our coaches in this league, because I know how hard we all battled and worked.
"I think that people hopefully are understanding that this league does play great basketball and has gotten better every year."
There is no denying the SEC's significant rise in basketball compared to years such as 2009 or 2013, when only three members received bids. Yet Auburn's impressive surge to the 2019 Final Four, which contained consecutive victories over blue bloods Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky, is getting further away in the rearview mirror.
That Alabama and Tennessee have yet to reach a Final Four remains a sore spot for those two successful programs, while Kentucky's last trip occurred in 2015. John Calipari's Wildcats are 1-2 in NCAA play since the global pandemic, failing to make the 2021 field and getting upset in 2022 by 15th-seeded Saint Peter's, the same program that awaits Tennessee in Charlotte on Thursday night.
"I don't feel that now," Calipari said Sunday in a news conference when asked about the mounting pressure to advance. "What's the worst that can happen? I've already been fired and been through that. This ain't about me. This is about these kids, and that's the reason I try to take all the pressure off of them.
"My job is to get them fresh and loose and then focused and locked in when we practice. Then let's see where it goes. I think I've got a good team, but they're going to have to go perform. We're built for March. Let's go. Let's prove it."
Memories, memories
Tennessee's only previous meeting with Saint Peter's occurred in the first round of the 1984 NIT, with the Vols downing the Peacocks 54-40 inside Stokely Athletic Center.
That led Tennessee to a second-round pairing against UTC, with the Vols prevailing 68-66 on a Willie Burton jumper with three seconds remaining. The Mocs had advanced to that date in Knoxville with a 74-69 first-round win over Georgia in overtime at the Roundhouse.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.