SEC Basketball Saturday: Season ending drama and bracket shifts

By Chris Marler

Last second buzzer beaters, flagrant fouls, and chippy plays leading to ejections. 

That was just in the Iron Bowl of Basketball. Saturday in the SEC had it all. The final day of the regular season sealed the fate of several teams in the league and had some of the most memorable performances from its stars all season long. 

Here are our five takeaways from a wild final day of the SEC regular season. 

1. Iron Bowl of Basketball is better than football and it’s not particularly close.

Alabama-Auburn is the best rivalry in college basketball right now. Since 2019, both teams have advanced to the Final Four at least once, and now, they have a strong chance to secure No. 1 overall seeds in the NCAA tournament during that span as well.

Saturday’s game at Neville Arena was the second time in the history of the rivalry as top ten opponents. More than that, it’s the second time in three weeks they met with that distinction. 

Saturday was the 12th time these two have played since Nate Oats and Bruce Pearl took over each program. To say it’s been a close battle is the understatement of the century.

IBOB update for the Nate Oats-Bruce Pearl era:

Wins
Alabama 7
Auburn 5

Total points
Alabama 1,001
Auburn 1,001

SEC wins
Alabama 75
Auburn 72

Overall wins
Alabama 141
Auburn 141

Absolutely amazing.

— Kevin Scarbinsky (@KevinScarbinsky) March 8, 2025

The latest installment was an instant classic, as Mark Sears’ last second floater buried Auburn in overtime. It’s unclear how much the win will change the perception of either team in the eyes of the selection committee. Regardless, the bragging rights in the state were more than enough to have on the line for each side.

2. Texas’ choke job 

With five games left in the season, Texas was firmly in the field of 68 to be a tournament team. They lost their first two of the final five. Plus, to make matters worse, they lost those two to Arkansas and South Carolina, who at the time were both in the bottom of the standings in league play. 

Regardless, Texas still found itself as a projected tournament team with their final three games. That includes two games at home against teams projected out of the tournament (Georgia and Oklahoma). Remember, home teams were winning at a nearly 80% clip this season in the SEC. 

They lost both. 

The worst part of their collapse wasn’t the Longhorns losing four of their last five to miss the field. It wasn’t watching Rodney Terry grossly misuse the talent. It wasn’t even watching next year’s lottery pick Tre Johnson go 0-of-14 from the field in the season finale. The worst part is that despite all of those things, they still had a chance to get into the tournament as long as they could win, at home, against arch-rival Oklahoma. 

Sady, they lost that, too.

3. Bracketology update 

Heading into the SEC Tournament in Nashville, Joe Lunardi has updated his latest bracketology projections. Thirteen SEC teams are projected to secure spots in the field, with Auburn still holding onto the No. 1 overall seed despite suffering back-to-back losses to Texas A&M and Alabama this past week.

The Tigers, along with Florida, are set to claim No. 1 seeds. Meanwhile, Alabama and Tennessee remain locked in as No. 2 seeds. However, if either team wins the tournament in Nashville, they would almost certainly leap past Houston to secure a third No. 1 seed for the SEC.

Here’s a look at the current projected seeds for each SEC team from the latest Bracketology:

No. 1 – Auburn 

No. 1 – Florida 

No. 2 – Tennessee 

No. 2 – Alabama 

No. 3 – Texas A&M 

No. 4 – Kentucky 

No. 5 – Missouri 

No. 6 – Ole Miss 

No. 8 – Mississippi State 

No. 9 – Vanderbilt 

No. 10 – Georgia 

No. 11 – Arkansas 

No. 12 – Oklahoma

4. Impressive final pushes

Although teams like Auburn struggled down the stretch, dropping their final two games, Alabama stumbled with five losses in their last eight, and Texas faltered by losing four of their last five, other teams closed out the regular season on a high note with strong performances. 

Namely, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Georgia. Kentucky went on the road against Misosuri on Saturday and ran the Tigers out of the building. That was the same building that they were 18-1 in prior to the showdown. Arkansas also had a strong finish, winning four of their last five games. That includes two home wins over ranked teams in Missouri and their one point thriller over Mississippi State.

ARKANSAS GETS THE HUGE WIN OVER NO. 25 MISSISSIPPI STATE 🔥 @RazorbackMBB finishes the regular season with a BANG! pic.twitter.com/Ij4xC7dV9b

— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) March 8, 2025

However, those finishes paled in comparison to what Georgia did. The Bulldogs were firmly on the outside looking in for the NCAA tournament just a few weeks ago. After losing nine of their last 11 games and facing a bleak outlook, Mike White’s squad turned things around by winning four straight, including a victory over No. 3 Florida, and dominating their final three games with an average margin of 12 points per game. 

5. Bold predictions for Nashville

The SEC tournament is awesome every year. However, it’s going to be even better in 2025 with the 16 team format. Fans will get three full days of games from Wednesday through Friday. The depth of this league is unreal this season and that will be on full display. 

To give an idea of the depth of the league, the top four teams in the tournament are currently protected as the top six teams in the national tournament. That’s the top half. The “bottom half” features teams like Vanderbilt as a No. 12 seed, who has two wins over top ten teams this season. It also has Mississippi State as a ten seed in the tournament. Yes, the same Mississippi State that is currently ranked in the top 25.

Check out more of our SEC coverage here.