Winning 10 of your first 11 games in SEC play like Alabama basketball has done this year would be impressive in any season in the history of the league. But this year, in this league, it's a remarkable accomplishment.
Plenty of prognosticators have pegged the SEC as not just the best league in the country this season, but perhaps the deepest, most talented league in the history of college basketball. Count ESPN's Jay Bilas among those stating that opinion:
.@JayBilas says the SEC is on a generational run 👀
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) February 11, 2025
(via @finebaum) pic.twitter.com/EZGOZybTCX
Bilas is considered one of the top college basketball experts out there. Bilas played at Duke in the 1980s, was an assistant coach for four seasons with the Blue Devils, and has worked as an analyst for ESPN since 1995. He knows the game and while everyone can be guilty of recency bias from time to time, it's hard to dispute his claim.
In Joe Lunardi's most recent bracketology, a whopping 13 SEC teams are projected in the field of 68 with a 14th (Arkansas) as the first team left out. It's an astonishing number for any league, but particularly one that was barely a multi-bid league as recently as 10 years ago. The coaching talent has increased immensely since then as league-wide basketball is taken more seriously now than ever before.
This week's AP Poll has five SEC teams in the Top 10, including four of the Top 5, and all three of the top spots. South Carolina and LSU have been bad, but the remaining 14 teams in the league are all currently in the KenPom Top 50. Almost every road game in the league this year is a Quadrant 1 opportunity for the visitor.
Alabama basketball dominating a dominant league
There are no easy nights. You can't afford to take a single team lightly. And that's what makes Alabama's 10-1 start to SEC play so impressive. That mark includes road wins over No. 8 Texas A&M, No. 15 Kentucky, and No. 22 Mississippi State. Not to mention consecutive road wins over NCAA bubble teams Arkansas and Texas, both of which were in search of resume-boosting victories they couldn't find against the Crimson Tide.
With seven games remaining, now isn't the time for self-gratification. All seven of Alabama's remaining regular season opponents are good enough to beat the Crimson Tide. Currently, all games will come against teams ranked in the AP Poll this week.
The road only gets tougher, which is why it was all the more important for Alabama to get off to a hot start in league play with how the schedule finishes.
It'll take similarly high-level performances and high-level effort like Nate Oats got out of his team in Austin on Tuesday night for the Crimson Tide to navigate this stretch and have a realistic shot at winning what Bilas called the most powerful league in the history of college basketball.