Sec Basketball Tournament

SEC Basketball Tournament

For both men’s and women’s teams, winning the SEC Tournament means an automatic bid to the holiest of all basketball events, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament. The SEC Tournaments for men and women are single elimination events. All teams are seeded based on their regular season performance. SEC Tournament play prepares basketball players for more intense competition during inter-conference post-season matches that will come with the National Invitation Tournament or the NCAA Tournament.

Currently, teams fall into one of two groups within the SEC, the Eastern and Western Divisions. SEC Eastern Division contains Florida, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina while SEC Western Division contains Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Arkansas, Auburn, Alabama, and Louisiana State. The SEC Tournament is the deciding factor for which team division championship title, and also, most importantly, gets the coveted automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Sec Men’s Basketball Tournament

Pete Maravich, Charles Barkley, and Shaquille O’Neal are common household names for basketball fans. Legends like these gained their skills during their college days at SEC schools and thrilled fans in SEC (and NCAA) Tournament play. The men’s tournament underwent various changes throughout its development, including a strange period from 1953-1978, when no SEC Tournament play was held at all. Subsequently, one important team established itself as a leader in SEC basketball.

Since 1979, the University of Kentucky basketball team has won the SEC Tournament 12 times. It is one of the undisputed elite programs in all of college athletic teams. An astonishing 25 out of 47 SEC Tournament championships belong to the Kentucky Wildcats, which also led to numerous wins in NCAA tournament play. With impressive support from thousands of fans, Kentucky also has the highest game attendance of all Division I men’s basketball.

SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament

Lady basketball players made a late appearance in SEC Tournament action; the first women’s tournament style event took place during the year 1980 and has been played every year since then. However, the first official SEC Tournament followed the1982-1983 season, at which point the SEC formalized the number of conference games played by each team in one season.

Female ball players waited a long 47 years to have the opportunity to participate in the same type of competitive play-off action as their male counterparts. Like Kentucky’s dominant men’s team, women’s basketball has its own powerful force in SEC Tournament play.

Ladies from the University of Tennessee Volunteers have appeared in the final round of the tournament an impressive 17 times, resulting in 12 SEC Tournament titles since the launch of the event in 1980. Experience and exposure through the SEC Tournament has resulted in 45 female SEC basketball players appearing on preseason rosters in the WNBA. Another 25 have gone on to participate with Team USA in the Olympic Games.