10 things I’m absolutely overreacting to after 5 weeks of SEC league play

We are less than 6 weeks from Selection Sunday.

With college football’s late signing day behind us, welcome to all just dipping their toes into the college basketball universe.

You picked a good year.

The SEC is the nation’s best basketball league in 2025, and it isn’t particularly close. With a NET rating of 21.49, the league is currently on pace to be the strongest league in the KenPom era, which began in 1997.

It’s a privilege to cover this league and a joy to watch the knock-down, drag out fight that has been league play, which is now in its second month.

As SEC play heads down the stretch, here are 10 things I’m absolutely overreacting to in SEC basketball this week.

1. It’s time to start talking about Auburn going 18-0 in the league

Only 2 teams in SEC history have been unbeaten in league play over the course of an 18-game schedule: Florida in 2013-14 and Kentucky in 2014-15. Both also won the SEC Tournament and advanced to the Final Four.

It’s time to start discussing whether Auburn will join them.

No, really.

Auburn is that good.

If the Tigers do it, they’ll be the best SEC regular-season team of all time. As good as the 2014 Gators and 2015 Wildcats were, neither played in the monster that is the SEC in 2024-2025.

Auburn hosts a terrific Florida team this weekend, but it’s hard to see anyone winning in Neville, especially after the close shave wake-up call that was Auburn’s 53-51 rock fight win over Tennessee 2 weekends ago. If the Tigers survive the Gators, there are no real threats to them on their home floor until their Senior Day game with Alabama. And it might take the national guard to beat Auburn on its home floor in Johni Broome’s final game on The Plains.

That leaves 4 tricky road games: at Vanderbilt, which has beaten Kentucky and Tennessee in Memorial Gym but lacks the size to hang with Auburn inside; at Kentucky, which seems unlikely to guard well enough to beat Auburn; and the 2 toughest: at February 15 at Alabama and March 4 at Texas A&M.

Bruce Pearl wouldn’t want to talk about being unbeaten, of course, and he’d be right. The list of games I just listed includes a staggering 6 Quad 1A games, beginning Saturday with the Gators.

But Auburn is preposterously good. It might happen.

2. Let’s put how good Auburn is into more perspective, shall we?

The KenPom Era began in 1997. That year also delivered the best conference performance in the KenPom era, when the ACC finished with a NET rating of 21.35, which the SEC is on track to eclipse.

Auburn’s NET rating through 22 games is 37.10.

That’s the best in the country, which is why the Tigers are No. 1 at KenPom. But how good is it historically, you ask?

In the KenPom era, only 6 teams have finished with a KenPom NET rating above 35. Three of those teams won the NCAA Tournament: Duke in 2001, Kansas in 2008 and UConn in 2024. All 6 reached the Final Four, and 5 of the 6 advanced to the national title game.

It was hard not to compare Auburn to those teams watching them demolish a quality Oklahoma team on Tuesday night in the Jungle.

There is history developing on the Plains. Enjoy the ride, Auburn fans.

3. Team of the Week: Arkansas Razorbacks

Because it’s boring to pick Auburn every week …

No one in the SEC had a better week than John Calipari.

The Razorbacks, left for dead and the NIT, resuscitated their season with 2 Quad 1 road wins.

First, they silenced a ravenous Rupp, riding 21 points from former Wildcat Adou Thiero an opportunistic defense that forced 14 Kentucky turnovers to a 10-point win in Lexington. Met with a mixed chorus of cheers and jeers on his way into Rupp Arena, Cal left with the patented swaggy walk that Big Blue Nation embraced for so many seasons.

For most coaches, that would have been sweet enough for one week, but how many times have we learned not to let a Calipari-coached team chock full of talent find belief?

The Razorbacks parlayed their win in Lexington into another Quad 1 win Wednesday night, jumping out to a 23-point lead at Texas and then hanging on down the stretch to defeat the Longhorns 78-70.

The Razorbacks are still just 4-6 against Quadrants 1 and 2, but with road wins over Kentucky and Texas, they have 2 “Quad 1a” victories to couple with a tremendous neutral court win over Michigan. That keeps them right in the mix for an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament. The schedule down the stretch is difficult but not harrowing, with 5 of their final 9 league games in Bud Walton Arena. Hold serve at home, including Saturday against Alabama, and the Hogs will likely find themselves in the field next month.

4. SEC Defensive Player of the Year is a 4-man race

Johni Broome will be the runaway winner of SEC Player of the Year, likely winning unanimously.

There’s also a compelling case to be made that he should win SEC Defensive Player of the Year, given he is the defensive anchor on the nation’s best team, an elite shot blocker, and a dominant 1-on-1 block defender and premier rebounder.

That said, the last SEC Player of the Year to also win SEC Defensive Player of the Year was Anthony Davis in 2011-12.

Voters tend to spread the love, and as voters, SDS thinks they will again in 2024-25.

Who will win?

Zakai Zeigler, last season’s winner, should not. Tennessee just played its best defensive game of the season — Saturday’s 64-44 revenge bludgeoning of Florida — without Zeigler.

That leaves 4 players, in our view: Tennessee’s Jahmai Mashack, Florida’s Alijah Martin, Mississippi State’s Cameron Matthews and South Carolina’s Collin Murray-Boyles.

All 4 are game-changing defenders. All 4 can guard multiple spots on the floor. All 4 rank in the top 25 nationally in defensive win shares, a metric that measures the defensive impact an individual player has on a team, combining their steals and individual defense with how well a team performs on the floor defensively as opposed to when they are not on the floor.

Murray-Boyles is likely out because South Carolina’s “0-for” the SEC. The award, rightly or wrongly, doesn’t reward elite defenders on bad teams.

Matthews is vital to everything Miss State does, and this is a bubble team without him, but it’s hard to see a player on a defense ranked just 50th in America winning.

That leaves Mashack and Martin.

Mashack leads the nation in defensive box-plus minus (which measures defensive impact solely based on score when a player is on the floor, per 100 possessions) and leads the SEC in defensive win shares (1.8). A Naismith Defensive Player of the Year watchlist member, Mashack is averaging 2.0 steals per game and has notched multiple takeaways in 13 of 22 outings this year, including 3+ in 7 and 4+ in 4. He’s a menace Rick Barnes calls “the best defender I’ve ever coached.”

If Mashack wins, it would be impossible to say he isn’t deserving.

Martin, however, is the winner if you value who elevates their team’s defense the most.

A season ago, Tennessee was a top-5 defense nationally despite Mashack playing less than 50% of the Vols’ minutes in SEC play.

Florida? Its defense ranked near 100th in the country. The Gators were bounced from the NCAA Tournament in the first round because they failed to get a stop against Colorado for 18 consecutive possessions.

Martin has helped Florida improve defensively by 80 spots in KenPom.

Martin has 1.6 defensive win shares, good for a top-10 spot in the country and just 0.2 behind Mashack. Martin averages 1.4 steals per game and has 4 games in SEC play, including 4 in a win over Georgia and 3 in Florida’s 30-point rout of Tennessee last month.

Most impressively? Martin has 4 games this season in SEC play where he has not surrendered a single basket in isolation defense, including against Texas and Jordan Pope and Tre Johnson, at Arkansas when he matched up with Johnell Davis, against Georgia and Silas Demary Jr., and in Tuesday night’s Walter Clayton Jr.-less win over Vanderbilt.

“A Mart has raised the competitiveness on our basketball team, there’s no question. He’s the ultimate winner. He wants the hard assignments,” Todd Golden told SDS earlier this season.

Like Mashack, if Martin won the award, it would be difficult to argue it wasn’t warranted.

5. The 5 best lineups in the SEC are …

Per Evan Miya, who collects data on just how efficient every 5-man group playing in college basketball is, because you know, someone has to do that… here are the 5 best lineups in the SEC, minimum 100 possessions played together as a group:

1. Auburn: Johni Broome, Chad Baker-Mazara, Chaney Johnson, Miles Kelly, Tahaad Pettiford.

This is the most efficient lineup in college basketball, and it isn’t especially close. This group’s efficiency margin is 65.2—that’s almost 6 points higher than the second-best group (Clemson’s starting 5).

2. Florida: Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin, Will Richard, Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon.

Golden’s best 5-man group doesn’t start, but this group tends to play most of Florida’s highest leverage minutes and with an offensive efficiency of 139.3, this is by far the best offensive 5 man group in the SEC—and America– with a minimum of 150 possessions played.

3. Tennessee: Zakai Zeigler, Jordan Gainey, Chaz Lanier, Igor Miličić, Felix Okpara.

This group excels on both ends, with an offensive efficiency margin of 128 (very good) and a defensive margin of 71 (great).

4. Missouri: Anthony Robinson III, Tamar Bates, Tony Perkins, Mark Mitchell, Trent Pierce.

It’s surprising that a group without Caleb Grill, the frontrunner for SEC 6th Man of the Year, is the most efficient lineup for Missouri, but with 108 possessions together, this is the best defensive 5 in the SEC, with a defensive efficiency margin of 62.1 — even better than any lineup Tennessee has played for 100 possessions or more.

5. Ole Miss: Sean Pedulla, Jaylen Murray, Dre Davis, Matthew Murrell, Malik Dia.

Chris Beard has settled on this starting 5 and they’ve rewarded him by improving the program’s defense nearly 100 spots from an efficiency standpoint from a season ago and doing enough offensively in the paint to maintain balance from a scoring standpoint. If Matthew Murrell’s 24-point outburst was a sign that he’s getting healthy, this could blossom into one of the nation’s most complete lineups down the stretch.

6. Kentucky needs Lamont Butler back, but no, we’re not worried about Big Blue yet

Kentucky has lost 4 of 5, which is invariably a statewide moment of crisis in the Bluegrass State.

But before we lose our minds, let’s remember that Lamont Butler, the best ball-handler and defender that Kentucky has, has missed the past 3 games with an injury. In that time frame, Kentucky has lost at home to Arkansas and at Ole Miss, surrendering an eye-sore 1.3 points per possession in the process.

Butler, who can guard 1 through 4 and is easily Kentucky’s most disruptive defender on the ball, has no immediate return date set, but Mark Pope did tell media on Wednesday that the star guard is “making progress.”

Kentucky’s dropped 43 spots, from 65thto 108th in the country in defensive efficiency in Butler’s absence.

When he returns, expect the Wildcats to begin to get enough stops again to win games. After all, this is still a team with one of the best résumés in the country, at least from a quality wins standpoint. You don’t beat the likes of Duke, Gonzaga, Florida, Louisville, Texas A&M and Tennessee if you aren’t really good.

Unless you are Auburn levels of awesome, lulls happen, especially in leagues as good as the SEC.

The educated guess here is that Kentucky will be just fine.

7. Hero Baller of the Week: Johnell Davis, Arkansas

Don’t say it too loud, because you wouldn’t want to jinx it, but Johnell Davis is starting to get right in Fayetteville.

The No. 1 player in the transfer portal got off to a nightmarish start for the Hogs, posting career-lows in shooting percentage and averaging under 10 points per game through his first 19 games.

It didn’t help that with Boogie Fland as the primary ball handler and creator, Calipari couldn’t seem to figure out how to best utilize Davis, either. Arkansas didn’t run many actions for him to do what he’s best at, which is shooting off screens (Davis shoots 11% better of screens than off the bounce, per Hoops Lens) and getting downhill and into the paint off dribble handoff and zoom actions designed to get him north-south.

That’s changed in the past 3 games.

With Fland unfortunately lost for the season, Calipari has been forced to run more offense around Davis, and the preseason All-American has responded with 3 consecutive performances with 18 points or better.

The best of those came Wednesday night in a massive win over Texas.

https://twitter.com/brhoops/status/1887361144987525353

Davis scored 24 points, made 4-of-8 3s, and hit vital free throws down the stretch to help Arkansas earn its 2nd consecutive massive road win. Davis wears his emotions on his sleeves and is a winner, having helped lead Florida Atlantic to a Final Four. Engaged and scoring, his defense also picked up, as he collected season-high 4 steals on Wednesday night. That’s the guy Calipari and the Hogs need if they are to push themselves back into the Field of 68.

8. Where I eat on a SEC Basketball Weekend in … Athens, Georgia

Athens is such a great college town that I almost want the Cocktail Party to go home and home. Almost.

If you are in a hurry, Cali N Titos is still a great move. Get the Cuban, and if you are going to the location on Lumpkin Street, remember to bring cash. They don’t take credit cards.

For finer, sit-down dining, there’s no shortage of options, but I’ve never had a bad meal at The Place, where you can get southern cuisine like chicken and waffles or, if you want greens, the delightful fried veggie platter, stuffed with pickles, okra and green tomatoes served with a house made ranch. Our favorite, though, was their southern take on bruschetta, where pimento cheese is the star.

The Sunday brunch is the scene stealer and worth the time on your way out of town, too. The brunch menu features southern chef takes on breakfast classics, the best of which is the stuffed French Toast, which comes on a bed of gouda grits. Show up hungry.

9. The SEC’s record-setting 12 NCAA Tournament teams will be:

Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Texas A&M, Missouri, Ole Miss, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Georgia and Arkansas. (We see you, Vanderbilt and Texas. Win more games!)

10. SEC Awards through 1 month of league play:

Best 6

Johni Broome (Auburn)

Walter Clayton Jr. (Florida)

Mark Sears (Alabama)

Zakai Zeigler (Tennessee)

Chad Baker-Mazara (Auburn)

Caleb Grill (Missouri)

Player of the Year: Broome

Defensive Player of the Year: Jahmai Mashack (Tennessee)

Freshman of the Year: Asa Newell (Georgia)

Coach of the Year: Dennis Gates (Missouri)