April 2023. I traversed the University of Connecticut campus with my friends on foot, walking mile after mile, taking in my surroundings. The men's basketball team had just defeated San Diego State to win the national championship. I watched the game with what felt like the entire state of Connecticut, crammed inside Gampel Pavilion. Once the final whistle blew, the campus and its chaotic residents could no longer be contained by the arena's confines.
Off we all went, into the early spring night. Carnage ensued (I promise I was an observer, not a perpetrator), and we did all we could take the moment in. Not everyone there liked basketball--- I would hazard a guess to say that most didn't. But they came anyway. It was about the feeling, about the community. We were all there for one reason. Even if you didn't love the game usually, you loved it that night.
Looking back on that memory that I will cherish forever, I realize how vital sports can be in our lives. I have sensational memories of that March 2023 run to the title. I watched every game with my friends, I cheered and jeered. I skipped class to celebrate, and did it again the next day. I enjoyed every second of what sports gave me as a student at UConn.
Sports does that often. It isn't always jocks with painted faces (sometimes it is), but the more you think about it, the more acceptable it feels to go that far. It's about community, and being apart of something bigger. Sports is very similar to music. Sports can help you escape to something bigger than yourself. Rooting for a team, a common cause, can bring people together like no other. An exciting two minute drill or a last minute buzzer beater is every bit as exhilarating as your favorite song--- except that you can't play this song again. It happens, you feel it, and then it's gone. But that feeling, that glorious high of the moment, is enough to take you anywhere you want.
This website is a passion endeavor. I love college basketball, baseball, and soccer. I started this website because I love writing about these topics, and I love watching them. Anyone reading along can hopefully feel that. This website is a place for me to be passionate and expressive, even if the audience isn't necessarily there. It's a way for me to keep rolling in creativity, and if it reaches even one person, then it is a success.
Stay tuned for more content weekly!
-Sean Murawski, SM Sports
Written by Sean Murawski // SM Sports
January 10th, 2025
Allen Toussaint’s classic song “Southern Nights,” later famously recorded by Glen Campbell, asked the all-important question, which was:
“Have you ever felt a southern night?”
This college basketball season, chances are that if you have felt a southern night, you probably lost. What Toussaint and Campbell didn’t know when they recorded that song is that this very lyric in question would strike fear into any opponent venturing below the Mason-Dixon line in the 2024-2025 season.
Collectively, the Southeastern Conference, long known for its gridiron dominance, has made its way to the helm of the hardwood. The SEC’s traveling roadshow went an astounding 185-23 in non-conference play this season. 23 of those wins came against opponents ranked in the AP Top 25 poll at the time. Some of these signature wins included:
Auburn defeating Houston, Iowa State, North Carolina, Memphis, and Purdue
Alabama defeating Illinois, Houston, and North Carolina
Kentucky defeating Duke, Gonzaga, and Louisville
Florida defeating North Carolina
Tennessee defeating Louisville, Baylor, and Illinois
Missouri defeating Kansas
Oklahoma defeating Arizona and Louisville
Auburn is likely the best team in the country, showing that early on by winning the Maui Invitational. Oklahoma also showed out early, winning the Battle 4 Atlantis. The SEC’s out of conference dominance is simply stunning, tearing through the nation’s powers like a knife through butter.
The SEC also dominates the metrics currently, as they have all season. At the time of this writing, here is the SEC layout by the numbers (as of Week 10/January 10th):
SM Top 25: 9 teams
SM Index Top 50: 14 teams
NCAA NET Rankings Top 50: 14 teams
KenPom Top 50: 14 teams
SM Bracketology: 13 teams
LSU and South Carolina are the only SEC teams that don’t appear in any of these rankings; essentially, every other team finds itself in all five of these metrics, with many of them towards the top. Auburn ranks #1 in the SM Index and the NET. They also rank #2 in the SM Top 25, but will move to #1 for Week 11 after Tennessee’s drubbing in Gainesville (more on that later). Seven of the SM Bracketology Top 16— the projected top four seed lines in the NCAA tournament— come out of the SEC, including two #1 seeds (Auburn and Tennessee).
The SEC has not always been the most dominant conference in the country. Previously, only three SEC teams have won a national championship (Kentucky, Florida, and Arkansas). Only five more (Auburn, Georgia, LSU, Mississippi State, and South Carolina) have ever even made a Final Four. You can add Oklahoma and Texas to that tally beginning this season, but in terms of the “classic SEC,” it has been largely carried by Kentucky’s blue blood status for years.
In 2025, however, there is a new regime. Several factors may have led to this new dominance. Firstly, the college basketball landscape has changed in terms of realignment. The conference itself has increased to 16 teams with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas. A lot of these schools, namely Auburn, Alabama, and Florida, have done a great job transforming their previously football-dominant schools into schools that now care a lot about playing great basketball. It is also worth noting that the SEC’s NIL pool is incredibly large. Southern schools with committed, wealthy donors may have had a lot to do with the conference landing big recruits. Some of the country’s most touted freshmen, like Arkansas’ Boogie Fland and Texas’ Tre Johnson, are excelling in the SEC en route to being sought-after commodities in next year’s NBA draft.
With the transfer portal and added years of eligibility due to COVID, there are also a handful of veterans in the game that have found their way to the SEC. Arguably the country’s best player, Auburn’s Johni Broome, is a fifth year senior who originally transferred from Morehead State for the 2022-2023 season. Kentucky, which was the notorious “one-and-done” factory under John Calipari, landed two upperclassmen in the portal for their first season with Mark Pope at the helm: Dayton transfer (and the country’s best three-point shooter) Koby Brea, as well as former San Diego State Final Four hero Lamont Butler. Chaz Lanier, a fifth year transfer from North Florida, has joined veteran defensive stalwart Zakai Zeigler at Tennessee, who have long reigned at #1 in the SM and AP polls this season.
It is also important to note that a handful of powerful coaches have had a major role in making the SEC a premier basketball conference. Bruce Pearl (after departing from Tennessee amid NCAA scandal) returned when Auburn hired him in 2014. Ever the committed basketball junkie, Pearl’s commitment to drumming up business for Auburn basketball has paid dividends in the last decade since his hiring. With passion, drive, and a whole lot of sweating through suits, his care for the program has helped ignite Auburn, leading them to a Final Four in 2019 and very recently becoming the school’s winningest basketball coach.
A year after Pearl was hired, Rick Barnes was hired at Tennessee after a stint at Texas. All Barnes has done in Knoxville is win National Coach of the Year in 2019, reach both a Sweet 16 and an Elite 8, and coach the likes of Grant Williams and Dalton Knecht to successful All-American seasons. John Calipari’s list of NBA stars to come through during his time at Kentucky is longer than anyone’s; Nate Oats has turned Alabama into a fast-paced national juggernaut; Florida has been revitalized by Todd Golden. The list goes on.
All this being said, there is a very specific recipe and cocktail of factors that have pushed the SEC to the top of the mountain this season. Many of them came into play years ago, slowly but surely bringing the SEC up the national ladder. The only question is: how can they stay at the peak?
Now that conference play has begun, there will undoubtedly be cannibalization. Exactly half of all SEC teams will have to lose a game every time the ball is tipped from now on, but they will all be quality losses. The NCAA NET rankings have LSU at 67 and South Carolina at 96, but every other SEC team (that would be 14 of them!) sit inside the NET top 50. This renders essentially every SEC game from here on out a Quad 1 game, meaning a quality win and a quality loss are up for grabs whenever SEC teams duke it out. The NCAA selection committee is going to have a horrible time deciding where to put teams on Selection Sunday. Every SEC resumé will be stacked, no matter what.
Referring back to Tennessee, who lost by 30 points to Florida this past Tuesday, this kind of margin produces some intriguing conversation. It is likely that at some point or another, even the best SEC teams will face a wacky, large margin of defeat this season. Especially on the road, wins will be very hard to come by in conference play.
However, with so many teams, some schedules will naturally be lighter than others. At the moment, Auburn seems to have separated themselves from both the SEC pack and the national pack. Their schedule includes Tennessee and Florida at home, as well as Alabama and Kentucky on the road. Conversely, Tennessee gets Kentucky twice, Florida one more time in Knoxville, and Alabama at home. Alabama gets perhaps the worst draw of them all: Kentucky twice, Auburn twice, and Tennessee on the road.
The Big East is the only power conference to use a true double round robin schedule set up. The SEC, being such a large conference, is forced to produce a hodgepodge of schedules. Some teams have the fortune of getting a great team once at home, while others are cursed with one meeting on the road. Some teams get both, which could be positive or negative, depending on the surveyor. Likely, the best team in the SEC by regular season’s end might still be up for debate long into the postseason. Even teams that are pushed into the conference’s “second tier” (Mississippi State, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma— a combined whopping seven losses) will have a case to make noise in both the SEC tournament and the Big Dance.
From top to bottom, the SEC produces nightly theatre. Glen Campbell’s “Southern Nights” are a little different than the ones we see on the hardwood. These nights are filled with sweat, competition, high-octane scoring, and high-level basketball. Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and Kentucky are all favorites to go deep into the season, but don’t forget about the other nine teams. It’s possible San Antonio will see a southern flair like no other this March, matching (or perhaps surpassing) the 1985 Big East for three out of four teams representing their conference in the Final Four. In the words of Alabama’s Mark Sears, the SEC is the “...best league other than the NBA.” He may just have a case.
Sean Murawski is a writer for his own personal sports website, smsports.net. He publishes weekly columns and rankings on men’s college basketball, as well as coverage columns for the MLB.
Written by Sean Murawski // SM Sports
January 11th, 2025
In the nation’s capital on Saturday, UConn defeated a hot Georgetown team, 68-60, in front of a packed crowd at Capital One Arena.
After dropping their first conference game of the year against Villanova by 2 in heartbreaking fashion, the Huskies needed a statement game to prove they were worth sticking around in the national conversation. They needed it against a Georgetown team who had only lost 1 conference game, and is miles better than last season.
Alex Karaban (19 pts, 6 rebs, 4-6 3pt) needed a bounce back game more than just about anybody. After missing last week’s decisive free throws, he followed it up with a stellar performance in DC. He was supported by Solo Ball (15 pts, 3-8 3pt), who is truly emerging as a star and a focal point of UConn’s offense, especially in the absence of Liam McNeeley. Off the bench, Jayden Ross and Aidan Mahaney put in good minutes, while Samson Johnson scored 9 and blocked two shots.
For a young Georgetown team, a lot of eyes were on freshman big man Thomas Sorber. Sorber was solid, but not overbearing, with 9 points and 10 rebounds. He did block 4 shots, which disrupted a lot of UConn’s offense early. Micah Peavy (14 pts, 5 rebs) was the Hoyas’ highest scoring starter, and Curtis Williams Jr. (15 pts, 3-4 3pt) was a huge factor off the bench.
Both teams were rather sloppy with the ball, collecting 15 turnovers each. UConn had the advantage down low, with 30 of their 68 points coming in the paint. Georgetown got to the line more and started hot, but they never led by more than 6.
The score is a bit deceiving, as Georgetown was down by 23 points at one point. Admittedly, UConn’s close out tactics are a bit peculiar. In the final few minutes, there were several possessions that ended in Hassan Diarra chucking a long range three at the shot clock buzzer, which came after 30 seconds of the offense standing still. UConn’s offense takes a long time to develop anyway, and they typically use at least two-thirds of the shot clock. It’s a bit puzzling why that would be their plan down the stretch, and their costly turnovers made the game a bit closer at the end than the rest of the game actually was.
Georgetown’s youth definitely showed a bit during this game, and UConn’s veteran Alex Karaban delivered some big blows. His long range three pointers and deliberate movement off the ball gave UConn plenty of options across the floor. They are missing arguably their most lethal scorer, and this stretch of games is vital to get everybody involved and keep the line moving.
Under Ed Cooley, Georgetown have improved substantially this season. They have more conference wins at this stage (3) than they did the entirety of each of the previous three seasons. Georgetown being a good basketball school is great for the Big East brand, and with recent down turns from Providence and Seton Hall, it is admittedly great to see a DC arena jumping for a big-time conference game.
UConn’s stretch without Liam McNeeley will continue next weekend when they play host to Creighton, who themselves have fallen victim to the injury bug this season. Georgetown looks to rebound at St. John’s.
UConn’s next game: vs. Creighton, Saturday 1/18, 12 pm, FOX
Georgetown’s next game: at St. John’s, Tuesday 1/14, 7:30 pm, Peacock
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