NEWARK, N.J. — With No. 1 Florida already booked for San Antonio, Texas, and another two schools set to play in Sunday’s regional finals, there’s no doubt the SEC is the best conference in college basketball.
The league went 185-23 in non-conference play, including a combined 42-6 against the Big 12 and the ACC. Fourteen teams from the SEC made the NCAA men's tournament, shattering the previous record by three. The conference was the third in tournament history to send four teams to the Elite Eight, joining the ACC in 2016 and the Big East in 2009. Florida’s comeback to beat Texas Tech on Saturday was the league’s 20th win in the tournament, breaking the record set by the ACC nine years ago.
The conference could make up three-fourths of the Final Four should No. 2 Tennessee beat No. 1 Houston in the Midwest region and No. 1 Auburn top No. 2 Michigan State in the South. That’s been done only once before, by the Big East in 2013.
But it won’t be a four-by-four sweep. No. 1 Duke made sure of that in the East, clamping down on No. 2 Alabama’s top-ranked offense to win 85-65 despite landing an uncharacteristically off night from freshman Cooper Flagg, who scored 16 points on 6 of 16 shooting with nine rebounds.
The upshot from the Prudential Center is that the SEC might be the best conference in the country, but Duke is the best team. Even if the SEC places three teams in the Final Four, the Blue Devils should be the favorite to win the program’s first national championship under coach Jon Scheyer and sixth overall.
There’s no better support for this argument than the way Duke erased the Crimson Tide. The Blue Devils didn’t play close to their best game offensively — and still pulled out a fairly breezy, wire-to-wire win.
“I think it's kind of something that I've said a lot through this whole year,” Flagg said, “is we just have such a talented team. Each night could be somebody else's night.”
Behind a methodical offense and the most impressive defensive performance from any team in this tournament, Duke painted the picture of a virtually indestructible force buoyed by a supporting cast that has gone largely underrecognized amid the deserved focus on Flagg’s freshman-year brilliance.
Nothing came easy for the nation’s highest-scoring team. Only an uncontested dunk by senior forward Grant Nelson with under a minute to play allowed the Tide to sneak past their previous season-low scoring total of 64 points against Mississippi. This was just the second time in more than two years the program had been held below 70 points. Only four times this season had the Crimson Tide been held below 80 points.
“We just play our ...
