re: The Greatest SEC Basketball Programs of All Time

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Conference Championships may not mean that much when they happen but their stature will certainly grow over time and history will reflect kindly on them. That banner hanging in the Coliseum looks great and for the players and fans it is a great accomplishment for the school and something to be very proud of.

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That's fair.

At the end of the day, does any of it matter to a recruit at this point?

Probably not.

Most probably just want a bag. Some will want development so that they will get drafted higher, but the reality is that not most will get drafted at all.

But maybe it's always been that way in college sports.

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In this comparison, teams that just made the tournament for over 30 years automatically get credit for sweet sixteens or even elite 8 appearances just for accepting a bid to a tournament that many years was seen as the less desirable of the two.

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To be fair, teams had to actually earn the tournament, thus they did earn their sweet 16 or elite 8 credit.

Teams with a losing conference record were not included. This was the landscape and every team had to deal with it. Good teams benefited, bad team did not. The regular season and conference champions meant something. You can’t apply today’s standards to it.

Also, the notion the NIT was more prestigious for a time has been greatly inflated over the years.

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You can’t apply today’s standards to it.

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Exactly.

Yet that is exactly what this does. It gives the same points for tournament appearances and accomplishments in any decade. It gives the same points for an appearance in 1941 as it does in 1975 as it does in 2023, despite the landscape being drastically different. It gives the same points for a regular season title in any decade, despite the landscape being drastically different.

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The regular season and conference champions meant something

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If anything, with today’s super conferences, regular season titles are even harder to win and should mean more. Do you think it was harder to win the SEC in the 1980’s when the conference consisted of 10 teams and the league was regularly ranked as the 3rd to 5th best conference? One season it was ranked the 7th best. The league normally put 3 to 5 teams into the NCAA tourney. Just based on the greater number of teams it is harder to win a regular season title today than then. Add in the increased level of competition and it is vastly more difficult.

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Also, the notion the NIT was more prestigious for a time has been greatly inflated over the years.

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I am not arguing that it was or was not overinflated, or how much more prestigious the NIT was than the NCAA tournament, just that for well over a decade a team would rather play in the NIT than the NCAA tournament.

There is no doubt that Kentucky is the top team in the SEC and the only SEC basketball blue blood.

But trying to rank the rest of the teams accurately and objectively is very hard due to how much things have changed.

Where should we rank Georgia Tech and Tulane? They were members of the SEC for more seasons than Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas have been.

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Up until 1975, the NCAA tournament only included 16 teams.

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1952 - expanded to 16

1953 - this is when it started getting weird, expanded to 22 teams with10 first round byes and 6 play in games and in 1974 there were 9 play in games.

Then as you pointed out in 1975 it expanded to 32 teams

doh

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Team A in a 50 year Period
30 SEC Championships
50 Tournament Appearances
5 Sweet 16 Appearances
0 Elite 8

Team B in a 50 year Period
0 SEC Championships
25 Tournament Appearances
12 Sweet 16 Appearances
8 Elite 8
5 Final 4
2 Runner-Up
1 NC

Which program is better? I just made those numbers up. It doesn't reflect actual teams.

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I appreciate the point you're trying to make and realize it's a hypothetical one but I'm not sure Team A is a realistical statistical possibility particularly the stat about a team winning only 1 round of 32 game out of every 10 such games they've played. Even teams that have historically been weak to even horrible in Sweet 16 games (Alabama and Tennessee for example) have a higher winning % those games....

Overall NCAA tournament and Sweet 16 appearances and Sweet 16 game records for those two:

NCAA tournament appearances:

Tennessee - 27
Alabama - 26

Sweet 16 appearances:

Alabama -12
(2-9 record in previous Sweet 16 games)

Tennessee - 11
(2-8 record in previous Sweet 16 games)


Both teams likely have as bad a record as a team that has been to 10+ Sweet 16 games can statistically have in Sweet 16 games yet as bad as both teams have been in this round they both still managed to win their Sweet 16 games at twice the rate as your Team A example.

In other words, you make a valid point but I contend there's no statistically realistic way Team A (with 50 tournament appearances) doesn't have a bare minimum of at least twice as many Sweet 16 and Elite 8 appearances as two teams (Tennessee and Alabama) with roughly half as many tournament appearances.

I just disagree with putting almost all the weight in the NCAA tournament where success is so incredibly fickle and fleeting and doing so while almost complete neglecting the consistency of overall regular season success, conference championships, consistent overall winning season after season and having teams that have historically accomplished enough most regular seasons to get into the NCAA tournament.

I would point to FSU baseball as an example of this. They've incredibly good if not dominant year after year in the regular season and have hosted and won countless baseball regionals and super regionals and have 24 CWS appearances. Yet many here would argue that Vandy deserves to be ranked right there with if not ahead of FSU historically because 2 national titles in only 5 CWS appearances apparently blows away the consistency of making it to 24 CWSs and not winning it all.