The 2025 SEC Tourney could be one for the ages. I could see it be chaos, but I could also see it chalky most if not all the way. Hats off to Florida for having one hell of a regular season. Florida is damn scary and I expect you will have a magical run in the tournaments. What is your SEC tourney predictions?
Just for kicks, I looked up Lunardi's last bracketology before last year's SEC Tournament and then NCAA Tournament seedings. Small sample size, I know, but for the higher-projected teams (seeds 1 through 5), I didn't see significant reward or risk from SEC Tournament performance. Tennessee stuck out as the exception since they like UF this year entered the SEC Tournament as a bracketology #1 (although they still made an NCAA region final as a 2-seed).
I think one of the top three seeds will win. It will be tough for any of them to win three straight against some brutal competition though. I don’t think four seed Tenn or any of the lower seeds can run the gauntlet. Mizzou or Kentucky could I suppose but would have to win four, highly unlikely I think.
Golden is 7-5 in conference tournaments as a head coach, and his only opening game loss was in his first year here to Miss State in overtime, without Castleton. And two of his three losses at SF came to Gonzaga (other was a 4pt loss to Loyola Marymount, which was third in their league). There may be some question about his lack of NCAAT success or experience, but even there both of his losses were in close 7-10 seed games (5pt OT loss to Murray State, 2pt loss to Colorado). Simple fact is that Golden's teams have not laid eggs in tournament play. They don't lose to worse teams and they compete with equivalent teams. Whoever we play in Nashville or in our regional will be worse or roughly equivalent. For my money, I want to get a win over Mizzou. Hate the prospect of playing Bama again after beating them on their court a week earlier, but we match up very well with them. Wouldn't mind another shot at Kentucky. We are much more mature and battle-tested, especially our bigs, and we have been light years better defensively as the season has gone on. Will always hate playing into Sunday, but our last three Final Four teams have all won the SEC tournament (granted, against much weaker leagues). IIRC, all of Donovan's teams that made the Elite 8 or better (other 2000 or 2012, when we lost to UK) got to the SEC final (2006, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014). I think it's still the goal and gives you a ton of confidence heading into the NCAAs. We have the depth to handle it, especially with Alexis back. We can absorb fouls up front with five potential bigs, and we have five guards who can rotate in to keep our starters fresh on Friday and Saturday.
I'd just add that if we want to improve above the #4 overall (assuming the selection committee takes the sect into consideration which I think they will for these top seeds), a game / win against Bama will carry more weight than beating UK. But from what I'm seeing out there, I'm not sure we get above the overall 4 even if we beat AU and UA again.
The best thing I can say about playing in the finals, for either team, is that the first game in the tourney should be an easy one so the tired legs from the SECt should not be a factor.
With Big Sam Alexis back, it is great timing for the Gators. The SEC Tournament is a rugged affair as we got beat up in the title game last year. We were not the same team after that game. With Sam, plus Micah coming in late, much stronger and a few more lbs on him, teams will have to allow adjustments to their strategy in game as our fresh bigs come off the bench. If a team was built to have a long tournament run, it’s Florida this year
I’ve been a defender of Duke on here, but if Florida beats Missouri, Bama, and Auburn, I’d seed Florida above Duke. At that point, Florida would have 12 quad one wins to Duke’s 8 or 9. And Florida would have five top 10 NET wins, compared to Duke’s one. I still think no one with a right mind should discount Duke as a national title threat, but from a resume standpoint, I think Florida would have a good argument.
Would love to avenge losses to Missouri and Kentucky - meaning Florida would have a win against every other SEC team this season.
I definitely want us to avenge that loss to Missouri. Other than that the only team that scares me is Tennessee. We wouldn’t meet them til the finals, so it’s academic as far as our seeding goes. Even when we beat them by 30 at home, it was such a physical and mentally tough game. Up at their place, even them being short handed, I knew we were going to lose right from the tipoff, because they were so locked in defensively. They just denied every pass and powered through every screen, whether it was an on ball or off ball screen.
Just come through the SEC tourney healthy as a one seed or 2 seed doesn't matter as much as coming out of that tourney healthy.
