The story of the SEC’s dominance this season began back in early December during the SEC/ACC Challenge: After nine games — a 9-0 SEC record on day one — the SEC had already clinched the two-day, 16-game conference challenge.
Even though the ACC is the worst of the power conferences in 2024-25, the numbers — and social media posts — were eye-opening. The Challenge ended with a 14-2 edge to the SEC, one of the first signs of the overwhelming supremacy displayed.
The conference’s success wasn’t surprising: The SEC had a terrific offseason in the transfer portal, landing 17 of ESPN’s top 50 transfers. In a piece looking at the winners and losers of the portal, the SEC had 10 schools in categories where they helped themselves — and only one listed among schools that were hurt by the portal. It had nine teams ranked in the preseason AP poll and currently boasts four of the 10 top-performing freshmen in the country.
(As an aside, the SEC’s ability to stockpile talent isn’t slowing anytime soon. For the second year in a row, the SEC will be bringing in the most ESPN 100 freshmen in the country next season. The league had 26 top-100 prospects committed to member schools at the end of the early signing period.)
But no one could predict a showing that two months into the season is approaching “best-ever” status.
Conference play in the SEC begins Saturday, highlighted by Saturday’s two Sonic Blockbuster games, Florida’s trip to Kentucky (11 a.m. ET, ESPN) and Tennessee hosting Arkansas (1 p.m., ESPN). Later in the day, unbeaten Oklahoma heads to Alabama (6 p.m., SEC Network) and an in-state rivals Texas A&M and Texas clash (8 p.m., SEC Network).
Is the SEC having the best season of any conference all time? And will it continue in league play? Here is a look at six statistics that demonstrate the league’s dominance entering conference play.
88.9%
That’s the SEC’s overall winning percentage entering conference play. It’s by far the best record of any conference in the country. It’s by far the best winning percentage in the league’s history. The SEC has all three of the remaining unbeaten teams; every team in the conference has at least 10 wins; and South Carolina is the only team with more than two losses (the Gamecocks have a whopping … three defeats). All 16 of the SEC’s teams have at least a .750 winning percentage; according to ESPN Research, it’s the first conference with every team having a .750 winning percentage entering January since the 1983-84 ACC, which had just eight teams.
Of course, that winning percentage will drop significantly as league play starts. But as ESPN’s Neil Paine researched last month, the SEC now has the best nonconference record for any conference in games before New Year’s Day since at least 2002-03, according to SportRadar data. The previous pacesetter was the 2003-04 ACC, which had an 88.2 winning percentage entering conference play.
12
That’s the number of SEC teams currently in Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology. The record for bids from a single conference is 11, which the Big East sent in 2011. That number could dwindle as conference play heats up, but as we’ll get to a little bit later, nearly every game in SEC play is going to be a Quadrant 1 opportunity, meaning very few losses will hurt a bubble team’s résumé — and there are opportunities galore for profile-boosting wins.
There were 10 SEC teams in this week’s AP Top 25, so that’s at least 10 teams in a relatively strong position entering conference play. Georgia is knocking on the door, with only one loss and a win over St. John’s. Texas is 11-2 and will get a chance to prove itself very quickly in SEC play: The Longhorns open at Texas A&M, vs. Auburn, vs. Tennessee, at Oklahoma and at Florida. Missouri is 11-2 and owns a statement win over then-No. 1 Kansas. Lunardi has two more teams — Vanderbilt and LSU — in his First Four Out and Next Four Out, respectively. A record-setting season is very much within the range of outcomes.
21
That’s the number of wins the SEC has against AP-ranked teams in nonconference play — the most ever by a conference prior to postseason play, according to ESPN Research. The SEC isn’t stat-padding and stacking wins against weak nonconference slates: They are beating the best of the best and doing it every night.
To take it a few steps further, here are the power conferences’ records against the top 25 teams at BartTorvik.com:
SEC: 15-10
ACC: 5-31
Big East: 5-18
Big Ten: 11-26
Big 12: 9-22
Expand it to the top 50:
SEC: 27-17
ACC: 13-55
Big East: 15-33
Big Ten: 21-40
Big 12: 16-36
The top 100?
SEC: 51-22
ACC: 27-79
Big East: 32-45
Big Ten: 47-48
Big 12: 34-48
And in Quadrant 1 games:
SEC: 29-19
ACC: 12-53
Big East: 11-31
Big Ten: 21-40
Big 12: 15-36
Plus-20.12
That’s the league’s current rating at KenPom, the best in the country by some distance. In fact, it’s the highest since the ACC finished at plus-20.21 in 2004. For reference, a team with a plus-20.12 net rating would be in the top 30 nationally in his rankings. There are four SEC teams in the top 10 at KenPom, seven in the top 25 and 11 in the top 40.
15
That’s how many SEC teams are ranked in the top 75 of the NET. South Carolina is the only SEC squad ranked outside of that threshold — also the only one outside the top 55 — and the Gamecocks are not that far off at No. 86. With Quadrant 1 games defined as home games vs. the top 30, neutral-site games vs. the top 50 and road games vs. the top 75, that means that nearly every time an SEC team plays a road game, it’s a Quadrant 1 opportunity.
One way to maintain the league’s dominance through Selection Sunday is for teams to rack up Quadrant 1 wins and limit losses to teams outside the first two Quadrants. It’s going to be awfully difficult for teams in the SEC — which has zero Quadrant 3 losses and just one Quadrant 4 loss as a league — to have résumés that become weighted down by the bottom teams in the conference.
5
That’s how many teams are ranked in the top 10 of this week’s AP poll.
The SEC hasn’t won a national championship since Kentucky in 2012 and has had just one Final Four appearance in the past four NCAA tournaments. With Auburn, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida and Kentucky all near the top of the rankings as we begin 2025, it’s a tremendous opportunity for the SEC to end the drought.
Auburn is the favorite to cut down the nets entering January, while Tennessee is ranked No. 1 in the AP poll and isn’t far behind the Tigers when it comes to championship hopes. Alabama has one of the most talented rosters in the country, Florida hasn’t lost a game yet and Kentucky already owns wins over Duke and Gonzaga. And nobody will be shocked if Texas A&M or Mississippi State or even Arkansas found its way to the Final Four come March.
The SEC is without a doubt the most dominant and deepest league in the country.
