The SEC Men's Basketball Tournament is getting underway in Nashville this week with the deepest field in league history. This will be a perfect NCAA Tournament tune-up for all teams involved as you will play a tournament quality team nearly every day. Only South Carolina and LSU have no path to the Big Dance without winning the league.
13 of the other 14 teams are currently projected to be IN the NCAA Tournament, per Joe Lunardi. The 14th team (Texas) is projected as one of the first four out.
All of those teams are good enough to make a run in Nashville and ultimately cut down the nets. Because of that, it begs the question of which team won the SEC Tournament as the lowest seed? The answer to that depends on which era you are talking about.
Two SEC teams can stake claim as lowest seed to win the tournament
Two SEC teams can stake this claim. 1985 Auburn and 2008 Georgia.
From 1979-1992 there wasn't a divisional format in the SEC. From 1993-2011, the SEC seeded teams by division. From 2012 through the present, the SEC abandoned the divisional format once again.
In 1985, Auburn won the SEC Tournament as an 8-seed, which remains the lowest overall seed to ever win the SEC Tournament. Led by head coach Sonny Smith and sharp shooting wings Chuck Person and Chris Morris, the Tigers becamse the first team in SEC history to win the tournament by winning four games in four days.
Auburn defeated 9-seed Ole Miss, 1-seed LSU, 5-seed Florida, and 3-seed Alabama on their way to the SEC Championship. The Tigers won the final three games by a combined eight points.
Auburn earned the SEC's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament as a result and were given an 11-seed. Their Cinderella run wasn't over, though. The Tigers upset 6-seeded Purdue and 3-seeded Kansas by a combined three points before falling to 2-seeded North Carolina in the Sweet 16.
2008 Georgia was the worst overall regular season to ever win the SEC Tournament and the lowest seeded team of the divisional era. During the period from 1993-2011, the SEC seeded teams 1-6 based on their division. Georgia went 4-12 in the regular season and were the 6-seed from the East, tied for the worst record in the SEC as a whole with Auburn.
In the most dramatic SEC Tournament in history, Dennis Felton's Georgia Bulldogs went on a miraculous run winning four consecutive games, including three in just two days, to win the SEC Championship.
Due to a Tornado outbreak on Friday and damage to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia's second round matchup with Kentucky was postponed until Saturday morning as the tournament shifted over to Georgia Tech's campus. Georgia beat Kentucky that morning and six hours later beat West No. 1 Mississippi State to advance to the championship game. The Bulldogs beat Arkansas on Sunday to cap the most miraculous run in league history.
Georgia entered the 2008 SEC Tournament with just a 13-17 record and walked out of Atlanta with an NCAA Tournament bid. They were given a 14-seed in the NCAA Tournament as a result and their Cinderella run ended in the first round with a loss to 3-seeded Xavier.
Since the SEC went back to the no divisional format starting in 2012, Auburn in 2019 as a 5-seed is the lowest seeded team to win the league tournament. That Tigers team got hot at the right time, won the SEC Tournament, and then advanced to the program's first Final Four.
In 2022, Texas A&M as an 8-seed advanced all the way to the SEC Championship before losing to 2-seeded Tennessee.