Maybe I’m a purist, but there should be value in winning a tournament involving the nation’s top conference. That’s what’s worth keeping in mind all week at the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament in Nashville, where a battle-tested champion will be crowned on Sunday.
If that’s the case, yes, there are stakes on the line. No, it won’t be a true barometer of what awaits in the NCAA Tournament. That’s fine.
But whether it’s getting a bubble-bursting victory to fend off hot-seat talk or making a signature statement to lock in a 1-seed, there are still plenty of SEC coaches who have something to prove.
I ranked the top 5:
Remember when Mizzou burned the nets with a 110-point outburst against Alabama? Since then, Dennis Gates’ squad lost 4 of 5 with the lone win being against South Carolina. The Tigers still earned a 7-seed — that’s no small feat this year — and won’t have to sweat out an NCAA Tournament bid. That’s a massive positive, especially after last year’s goose egg in SEC play.
But Gates makes this list because you can bet he’s desperate to avoid a world in which he loses to a double-digit seed for a 4th consecutive loss. Would that move Mizzou on to that dreaded 8-9 line? My guess is that wouldn’t be the case — Mizzou is likely going to be near the top 20 in both KenPom and NET on Selection Sunday — but don’t forget about how tricky this gets for the selection committee as it tries to avoid conference matchups in the Round of 32. It would feel all too familiar for Mizzou if it was on the wrong end of a weird Selection Sunday development like that.
Wait, wait, wait. What does Golden have to prove? He’s got Florida knocking on the door of a 1-seed for the first time in over a decade, and the week in Nashville certainly won’t define how the 2024-25 Gators are remembered. Why include him? And if he’s on this list, why not include Nate Oats and Rick Barnes as they pursue a 1-seed? For starters, Barnes and Oats both won this event in the last 3 years.
March can be fickle. For all we know, the Gators will run into the wrong Round of 32 matchup and it’ll miss out on a Sweet 16 trip for the 7th consecutive time. Consider that all the more reason why Golden has something to prove this week. Winning the SEC Tournament in a historic year like this would matter. It would matter for a 30-something coach who has yet to have that signature postseason feat. It would say a ton about Golden if he led Florida, a borderline top-25 squad entering the season, to an SEC Tournament title to leave no doubt about a 1-seed.
The SEC’s youngest coach can make a loud statement in Nashville.
In the 2020s, Calipari has 1 more SEC Tournament victory than you and me. In case you haven’t heard, he’s not at the program where his postseason 180 took place. In Calipari’s first SEC Tournament at Arkansas, you’d better believe that he’s got plenty to prove, and not just because his ex will have a major presence in Nashville. He’s got a squad that, while hot since his massive reunion win in Lexington, would love to avoid a scenario in which it loses to 16-seed South Carolina for the second time in as many weeks. So in terms of the NCAA Tournament bubble, obviously that’s important (Joe Lunardi has Arkansas among the “last 4 byes” group).
Think about this, too. Winning multiple games in the SEC Tournament — something he hasn’t done since 2018 — to lock in an NCAA Tournament bid after that 0-5 start to conference play would feel more like vintage Calipari. When he was rolling at Kentucky, his team played its best once the calendar turned to February. Two wins this week would give Calipari a 9-5 mark during that time, and it would suddenly make the Hogs a terrifying early-round matchup in the NCAA Tournament.
Saturday’s win at Texas in the regular-season finale was monumental for OU’s NCAA Tournament hopes, but let’s not forget that the bubble can be a fickle beast come March. Even in a year in which the SEC feels like it’ll get the benefit of the doubt from the Selection Committee, there’s only so much grace one can get if it records a 6-12 conference record with a Round 1 SEC Tournament exit. How much grace Moser has remains to be seen.
Nobody would’ve assumed when he took over that he’d still be fighting for his first NCAA Tournament bid in Year 4, especially after a 13-0 start that had them knocking on the door of the top 10. The good news for Oklahoma is that it shook off a nightmare February by closing the regular season with a pair of victories. The bad news is that it’ll face a Georgia squad that handed it a 12-point loss back in January. A repeat of that and a missed NCAA Tournament could be all she wrote on the Moser era in Norman.
I would’ve flipped 1-2 on this list had Texas actually taken care of business on Senior Night instead of losing to Oklahoma while its best player, Tre Johnson, was 0-for-14 from the floor. Yikes. Terry might be coaching for his job this week in Nashville. You can argue that he deserves another year for the Elite Eight trip 2 years ago after the Chris Beard mess played out, but the optics aren’t in his favor. This is a bubble team who could be 1-and-done in the SEC Tournament if it can’t get past a streaky Vanderbilt squad that beat Texas a month ago.
In Year 1 in the SEC, it wouldn’t be an endorsement for Terry’s future if he went 6-13 vs. conference foes, especially if that loss knocked Texas out of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.
