SEC hoops is in better shape than last time tournament went to Tampa

Heading into the postseason, SEC basketball is in supreme shape. The league should have four top-four seeds on Selection Sunday with both Alabama and LSU having top-25 resumes.

The conference may get just six teams into the NCAA Tournament, but throughout the season this has been the best league in college basketball thanks to an elite upper half. Due to that quality depth, we could be in for a wild SEC Tournament in Tampa this weekend.

That was 100 percent not the case the last time the conference held its postseason tournament in the Sunshine State.

Before John Calipari

After surging during SEC play in 2008, things fell apart for Billy Gillispie at Kentucky. The Wildcats were upset by Georgia in the SEC Tournament as a tornado forced the event to move to Georgia Tech. Under Dennis Felton, the Bulldogs would go on a crazy run and claim the automatic bid with a tournament title and earn a No. 14 seed in the process.

Things would quickly get worse for Kentucky despite Jodie Meeks putting together an All-American season.

The Wildcats would see Patrick Patterson go down with an injury late in the year and would lose four straight to end the season with an embarrassing home loss to a bad Georgia team on Senior Night. That defeat took Kentucky off of the bubble. However, the Wildcats weren’t the only ones with issues.

Entering the tournament in Tampa, LSU (25-6) and Tennessee (19-11) were the only two teams trending towards at-large status. Elsewhere, the league was not in great shape.

Kentucky would lose in the quarterfinals to LSU. Mississippi State would win four games in four days knocking off both LSU and Tennessee on the weekend to claim the SEC Tournament title and an automatic bid. Rick Stansbury’s Bulldogs would then be given a No. 13 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Not surprisingly, no SEC team made it to the second weekend and only LSU got past the first round. Four teams — Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina — went to the NIT with none making it to the semifinal round.

The 2009 season would go down as one of the worst in league history. However, things would get fixed quickly as Kentucky quickly hired John Calipari after the season, and the conference started to push teams towards investing in basketball.

SEC resurgence

Since that dreaded conference tournament, we’ve seen Kentucky win a national championship and go to four Final Fours. Florida also made the Final Four in 2014. South Carolina made the Final Four in 2017 and Auburn did the same thing in 2019. After quality hires and facility upgrades, the SEC is now one of the best conferences in hoops.

Thirteen years later, the SEC Tournament will return to Tampa in much better shape. Auburn and Kentucky are both national title contenders who are vying for a No. 1 seed. Arkansas and Tennessee each have the ingredients to make a run to the Elite Eight. Alabama and LSU could beat anyone on any given day and could give a top seed a scare in March Madness.

SEC basketball has come a long way. The tournament in Tampa will give the league a chance to show off the progress made over the last decade.