So Kentucky didn’t win, narrowly missing an opportunity to have two SEC teams in the Final Four for the second time in the last four years. But the argument for the rise of SEC Basketball is even stronger when it doesn’t depend on the Cats to carry it.
The bracket itself proved the point: this was the first time in ten years the SEC had four teams seeded 1-8. Then the last two weeks gave us three Elite Eight teams for the first time since 1986. In RPI the league played the most difficult non-conference schedule during the regular season, a change mandated by the league office and executed in full this season.