Two years ago, Mike Tranghese looked around at the state of SEC men's basketball and knew things should be better.
This feeling wasn't new. It's the reason why SEC commissioner Greg Sankey hired Tranghese as a consultant in 2016 to figure out how to fix this problem, after only three teams reached that year's NCAA tournament.
Even though the conference contained a perennial powerhouse (Kentucky) and a two-time champion during the aughts (Florida), the SEC didn't carry the cache of some its peers.
Two years later, the SEC is on the verge of history. As of Thursday, ESPN projects eight of the conference's 14 teams to be in this year's field of 68, breaking the previous record of six that was tied as recently as 2008.