How the SEC Added Cherry on Top to Statement Men's Basketball Season in NBA Draft

If the SEC didn’t have enough support its claim that its 2024-25 season was the best in college basketball’s recent memory, its administrators and coaches would likely point doubters towards what happened in Wednesday and Thursday’s NBA Draft. 

The SEC led all conferences with 13 total draft picks, five first-round picks and three top-10 selections. What happened on Wednesday and Thursday night wasn’t as much a crowning achievement of the league as it was a bow on top of the calendar year that it’s had. 

 "The league decided they want to be good in basketball,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said during the season. “It doesn't need to just be a football or baseball league. With basketball being one of the more popular sports in college athletics, they decided to put a big point emphasis on it. The administration and the league emphasize it. They've put resources into it and have hired great coaches who are able to recruit great talent. We've got more NBA players than any other league."

Every team in the league recorded double-digit wins in non-conference play.  It won the ACC/SEC Challenge 14-2. It had 13 teams ranked in the AP Poll over the course of the season with an additional team ranked in the preseason poll.  It had the AP’s No. 1 team for 12 out of the season’s 20 weeks and had a top five team in every rendition of the poll, too.

It backed up its regular season when it mattered, too. The league set a record by putting 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament. Eight of those 14 teams advanced to the round of 32. Seven of them advanced to the Sweet 16. Two of them took the stage in the final four. 

The league was ultimately represented by the national champion, who had two draft picks last week that clearly boosted their stocks in their NCAA Tournament run. 

Perhaps the greatest testament to the league’s top-to-bottom unflappability was where the rest of its first-round talents came from, though. No. 6 overall pick–the league’s highest pick–Tre Johnson led a Texas team to a 13th-place finish in the conference before its season ultimately ended in a parting of ways with head coach Rodney Terry. One spot above Texas in the league standings was 6-12 Oklahoma, which was the home of No. 7 overall pick Jeremiah Fears. All the way in last place was South Carolina and eventual No. 9 overall pick Collin Murray-Boyles.

“Our bottom two teams would have finished in the top half of most leagues,” Arkansas coach John Calipari said during the NCAA Tournament.

Perhaps Calipari is inflating that South Carolina team–which was often hampered by its lack of guardplay and offensive explosiveness–but it did finish 10-3 in non-conference play. You can tell the story of the 2024-25 college basketball season without mentioning that South Carolina team–and its eventual 2-16 finish in conference play that puts some pressure on head coach Lamont Paris after a stellar year one at the helm–but you can’t tell the story of college basketball’s season without a heavy dose of the league and its teams accomplishments. 

In a similar way, you can’t cover what happened inside the Barclays Center without zooming in on Johnson in his unprepossessing draft-night outfit, Murray-Boyles potential impact for the Toronto Raptors or delving into a case study regarding players like Auburn forward Johni Broome and why they aren’t as popular in these types of settings as they used to be. 

That’s what happens when a league puts up 46% of the selections in a 59-man field. Each of the league’s returning coaches and players have since moved on from the season they’ve had–if they haven’t, they’re in for a rude awakening–but in between summer practices with their new teams, they sent out one final reminder reminiscent to the one that Auburn coach Bruce Pearl did as his team clinched a Final Four berth. 

“How about the SEC?”

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