Brown: Kentucky reign over SEC basketball over, but Mark Pope's team still formidable foe

Brown: Kentucky reign over SEC basketball over, but Mark Pope’s team still formidable foe

Posted by author February 28, 2025 Basketball

Kentucky basketball’s dominance over the SEC has come to an end.

Oh, the Wildcats will still win league championships; that’s not what this is about. They’re just no longer the gatekeeper for basketball in the league.

The rest of the SEC has caught up.

There were pockets of challengers back in the day. Arkansas had its run in the 1990s. Under Billy Donovan, Florida was always a worthy adversary. But, by and large, each time there was a challenger, Kentucky outlasted those uprisings.

What we’re seeing now might be the revolution that finally knocks the crown off UK.

Auburn epitomizes why that’s the case.

Say what you want about Bruce Pearl, he was the right coach at the right time for the Tigers. Before Pearl, Auburn had gone 12 consecutive years without making the NCAA Tournament, and it had only been three times since 1997.

Pearl has taken the Tigers to the Big Dance in five of the last six tournaments held, captured the SEC’s regular-season title in 2022, won conference tournament titles in 2019 and 2024 and reached the first Final Four in program history.

UK last won the league’s regular-season title in 2020 and hasn’t won the conference tournament since 2018.

Should the Cats fail to capture this season’s conference tournament, it would mark their longest run without a title in the history of the league tournament that dates back to when UK won the inaugural one in 1933. (It should be noted, the SEC did not field a tournament from 1953-78.)

The basketball culture at Kentucky still reigns supreme.

None of the other 15 teams in the SEC will ever enjoy the spectacle of a standing room-only crowd in their arena for the introductory news conference of a new men’s basketball coach. UK showed why it’s a special place when fans turned out in droves for new coach Mark Pope last April.

So, no, Kentucky hasn’t fallen off.

Pope in his first season has exceeded expectations with a roster he put together in the 11th hour of last season‘s recruiting cycle.

With a healthy roster, the Cats knocked off four teams ranked in the top 10 when they played, including the season sweep of Tennessee and a November win over Duke, both of which could very well be No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.

The Cats will get another chance Saturday against the projected No. 1 overall seed of the tournament: Auburn. The Tigers, who are in first place in the SEC standings, visit Rupp Arena for their only matchup in the regular season.

It’s not about a coaching change, either.

The movement started well before coach John Calipari left for Arkansas after last season’s embarrassing postseason finish, which saw the Cats bounced in their first game of the SEC Tournament and eliminated by No, 14 seed Oakland in the NCAA Tournament.

The SEC can laugh at what’s happening in the ACC this season, but only because the SEC hit its nadir in 2009 and again in 2013. Those were the years the SEC got only three NCAA bids, and in ’09, the best seed was LSU getting an eight.

That’s around the time the SEC decided to get serious about basketball. UK didn’t need that lecture, but the rest of the class did — and it turns out they listened.

SEC teams put their considerable resources and dollars toward building up facilities, hiring great coaches and getting great players.

Now with the transfer portal; name, image and likeness; and, starting next season, the ability to pay players through revenue sharing; the SEC is poised to continue to be a pipeline of elite talent.

The difference is, now it’s not only generated from Kentucky’s roster.

Since former UK center Karl-Anthony Towns went No. 1 overall in 2015, the Cats have had two other players (De’Aaron Fox, 2017, Reed Sheppard, 2024) taken in the top-five picks of the NBA draft.

Auburn’s had two (Jabari Smith Jr., 2022, Isaac Okoro, 2020); Alabama (Brandon Miller, 2023) and Vanderbilt (Darius Garland, 2019) each had one; and both LSU (Ben Simmons, 2016) and Georgia (Anthony Edwards, 2020) have had players go No. 1 overall.

Also since Kentucky’s last Final Four trip in 2015, South Carolina (2017), Auburn (2019) and Alabama (2024) have made it. If you must, you can retroactively add Oklahoma (2016), too, since it is playing in its first season in the league.

It used to be the SEC’s bragging rights in basketball all connected to whatever Kentucky accomplished.

That’s simply not the case anymore.

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.