SEC basketball coaches hoping to change perception of conference

Perception and reality aren’t always aligned.

When it comes to SEC basketball, the conference is trying to prove its standing while feeling outsiders don’t respect the on-court product.

SEC basketball coaches were all in agreement last week at the conference’s spring meetings that perception is hurting the brand quite a bit. In 2016, only three SEC teams received NCAA Tournament bids, even though each conference coach believed more programs deserved entry.

The SEC hired Mike Tranghese, the former Big East commissioner who led his old conference to great basketball heights, to consult his new conference on how to improve its image and reputation. But that’s just a start. At the end of the day, there are still numbers and benchmarks conference teams need to hit.

As Georgia head coach Mark Fox said, the SEC would like additional clarity from the NCAA selection committee on what the conference needs to do to cement itself in the at-large process. Multiple SEC coaches agreed that the committee has had a habit of changing requirements every so often.

“It’s been somewhat of a moving target,” Fox said. “We have to get some transparency with the selection committee and find out what they’re looking for and work to hit those targets.”

Kentucky and Texas A&M met in the SEC Tournament’s championship game following seasons in which both programs hung around the top 15 to 20 nationally. Even though Kentucky won, Texas A&M received a No. 3 seed compared to Kentucky’s No. 4. Vanderbilt was the only other team to earn admission as a play-in No. 11 seed. South Carolina, which lost to Georgia three times, went 11-7 in conference play but was left out of the big dance.

Both Kentucky and Texas A&M ended the year in the RIP top 20. From there, it got dicey. Florida (45), Georgia (59), Vanderbilt (71), South Carolina (73) and Alabama (79) were the next five SEC teams in the year-end RPI rankings.

So while there has been a perception that the SEC isn’t as good as other conferences, the RPI does back up the claim. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey acknowledged as such, saying with the recent influx of new head coaches in the conference in the past few years — South Carolina’s Frank Martin, Alabama’s Avery Johnson, Florida’s Mike White, Vanderbilt’s Bryce Drew, Auburn’s Bruce Pearl and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes — that it could take some time for these teams to build power programs.

“We talked about how we’re actually quite good,” Sankey said. “We’re just not quite there yet. We had a band of teams between 50 and 75 in the RPI. We needed those to be between 25 and 45, and then we’re having an entirely different conversation.”

Scheduling was again brought up as a means to get the SEC on par with other conferences. But it might not be as simple as having every team schedule the toughest non-conference opponents as possible.

If a team finishes one year at the bottom of the conference, it might be in the SEC’s best interest for that particular program to schedule enough winnable games so that its RPI doesn’t suffer. After all, SEC teams do have to go against each other in conference play, and a loss to a team with a poor non-conference RPI could hurt in the eyes of the selection committee.

As for Georgia, which has scheduled strong opponents under Fox, nothing is going to change in this area.

“I think we’re focused on non-conference scheduling,” Georgia athletics director Greg McGarity said. “We want our conference to be as strong as possible. We just got to win more games and win the right games. We have to schedule really, really tough teams and we have to win those games.”

The SEC not only has to figure out a better formula to strengthen the conference RPI as a whole, but it simply has to win more games. Both Georgia and Florida were in the top 10 when it came to non-conference strength of schedule last season. Yet both were left out of the NCAA Tournament because they didn’t win enough big games throughout the year.

While the SEC needs to be better, there are conferences around the country, year in and year out, that seem to be perceived better.

The Pac-12 put seven teams into the NCAA Tournament this past season but had five (Colorado, California, Arizona, Oregon State and USC) lose in the first round. Utah was embarrassed in the second round by No. 11 seed Gonzaga. No. 1 seed Oregon was the only Pac-12 team to make a deep run as it advanced to the Elite Eight before losing to Oklahoma.

The Pac-12 didn’t have a perception problem before its poor showing in the NCAA Tournament. Then again, the Pac-12 went 5-1 against SEC teams during the non-conference season, signaling the SEC has more than just a perception problem to manage.

“Everybody thinks the simple solution is to win games, and that helps, certainly,” Barnes said. “But there are things that can help us along the way, such as marketing the entire package. I know our commissioner and the SEC staff are totally committed to it, and our athletic directors our committed to putting basketball where we want it to be.”

This story was originally published June 7, 2016 at 1:45 PM with the headline "SEC basketball coaches hoping to change perception of conference."