The SEC has become a basketball powerhouse, and they now have the NCAA bids to prove it.
The SEC rewrote the record book for most NCAA Tournament bids by a conference on Selection Sunday, sending 14 teams to the big dance this year with March Madness kicking off later this week.
It toppled the previous record set by the Big East in back 2011, when the conference earned 11 bids for that year’s tournament.
The impressive showing for the league was predicted to be a foregone conclusion after an impressive year for the conference’s teams, which included the Florida Gators winning their first SEC tournament championship in more than a decade with a win over Tennessee on Sunday.
The SEC, which went through massive growth in the last 10 years, held a .889 winning percentage in nonconference games this year and boasted a 30-4 record against the ACC, a 14-2 record against the Big 12 and a 10-9 record against the Big Ten.
The transformation had SEC commissioner Greg Sankey telling his staff in January that they should be eying 14 bids in this year’s tournament, and in an interview with ESPN over the weekend, before the bracket was announced, he said that was “justified.”
“We should never talk about less than 14,” Sankey said. “Literally, we said every expectation we communicate has at least 14, and maybe more, depending on how the season plays out. And I think that was fully justified then. And I think it continues to be justified now.
“And I feel good about breaking the record. We have to trust the committee with decisions. But when you look at wins in the conference against great teams, the number of Quad 1 experiences, Quad 2 experience, and the number of wins with our 14 teams, it’s incomparable.”
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