History says Kentucky needs to play well in SEC tourney to make a deep NCAA Tournament run

For a coach who has never made a secret of his dislike for conference tournaments, John Calipari spent his first nine seasons as Kentucky men’s basketball coach making SEC tourney success look easy-peasy.

Starting with the 2010 SEC Tournament through the 2018 event, Calipari and Kentucky went 22-3 in league tourney games, won the championship six times and reached the finals in eight years.

Alas, over the past five seasons, the worm has turned in a negative direction for Calipari and UK in the SEC Tournament.

Starting in the 2018-19 season, Kentucky has gone 2-4 in the SEC tourney and has advanced as far as the semifinals only twice, in 2019 and 2022. Adding to the frustration, in both of those semifinals appearances, Kentucky lost to border-rival Tennessee. And due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 SEC Tournament was canceled.

So as the current Wildcats prepare to go to Nashville this week for the 2024 renewal of the SEC Tournament, they will be seeking to turn the page back to the early years of the Calipari era.

If you wonder how important it is to Kentucky’s aspirations of making a deep run in the NCAA Tournament for the Cats to first perform well in the SEC tourney, the modern history of Wildcats men’s basketball provides a stark answer.

Since the Southeastern Conference resumed what had been a dormant men’s basketball league tournament in 1978-79, Kentucky has had nine of its teams advance to the NCAA Tournament Final Four.

This is how those nine UK Final Four teams fared in the SEC Tournament:

▪ 1984: Joe B. Hall’s Wildcats won the SEC Tournament championship game by two points over Charles Barkley and Auburn on Kenny Walker’s buzzer-beater.

▪ 1993: Rick Pitino, Jamal Mashburn and Co. won the SEC tourney title by strafing their three opponents by an average margin of 29.7 points a game.

▪ 1996: Pitino’s No. 1-ranked Cats were stunned in the SEC Tournament championship game by No. 25 Mississippi State 83-74.

▪ 1997: Ron Mercer and Co. steamrolled through three SEC tourney foes, winning by an average margin of 29 points a game en route to the title.

▪ 1998: Tubby Smith and the soon-to-become “Comeback Cats” had their closest SEC Tournament game in the quarterfinals, an 11-point win over Alabama, before blitzing No. 16 Arkansas by 25 points in the semifinals and No. 15 South Carolina by 30 points in the finals.

▪ 2011: Calipari’s second UK team polished off Billy Donovan and No. 12 Florida by 16 points for the SEC tourney championship.

▪ 2012: Just as it happened with Kentucky’s 1996 NCAA title team, Calipari’s eventual 2012 national championship squad was stunned in the SEC Tournament finals, falling 71-64 to Kevin Stallings and Vanderbilt.

▪ 2014: After a difficult, nine-loss regular season, Calipari famously “tweaked” the Kentucky offensive approach for the postseason and the Cats began an improbable March Madness ride by advancing to the SEC tourney finals — where UK fell by one point to No. 1 Florida.

▪ 2015: UK ran its record to 34-0 and claimed the SEC tourney title with wins over Florida, Auburn and No. 21 Arkansas.

You might have noticed a common denominator for Kentucky Final Four teams. Since 1979, every single Kentucky men’s basketball team that advanced to the NCAA Tournament national semifinals has at least reached the SEC tourney finals.

It is interesting that, of UK’s three NCAA championship teams since 1979, two of them were beaten in the SEC Tournament championship game. In the broader picture, it is not unusual for the ultimate national champion not to win their conference tournament.

Since the NCAA Tournament bracket expanded to at least 64 teams in 1985, only 16 out of 38 subsequent NCAA champs won their conference tourneys.

Of the past 10 recognized NCAA tourney title winners, only two — Villanova in 2018 and Kansas in 2022 — won their league tournaments.

What teams that are capable of winning the national championship do not do is lose their first conference tournament contest. Since 1985, no team that failed to win at least one game in their conference tourney has gone on to claim the national championship.

For UK in 2024, winning the SEC Tournament would have value beyond potentially setting the Wildcats up well for the more important tourney that follows.

With Tennessee having claimed the 2023-24 SEC regular-season championship, Kentucky has now gone seven years with only one league regular-season title (2019-20) won.

In that same time frame, the Wildcats have only claimed the SEC Tournament title (2018) once.

One way Calipari could calm restive areas of the Big Blue Nation concerned that the UK men’s basketball program is in decline is by winning something meaningful in 2023-24.

Obviously, it would be better if that meaningful achievement could come in the NCAA Tournament.

However, UK men’s hoops history suggests that Kentucky’s chances of making a deep run in the NCAA tourney this year hinge on the Wildcats first playing well in the SEC Tournament this week.

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