The SEC should play 20 conference games in men's basketball.

Every other power conference in men's college basketball is up to 20. But the SEC is staying at 18, and that's a missed opportunity.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

Let’s look at two groups that are made up of four college basketball conferences each.

The first group features the Big 12, the Big East, the Big Ten and the ACC.

The second group features the Mountain West, the Atlantic 10, the American and the Southern Conference.

If you were in charge of a conference and you wanted to ensure you were among the best in the sport, which group would you want to be like more?

The answer, of course, is the first group. That group features the last 11 national champions in men’s college basketball. The second group is a collection of mid-major conferences, and it’s still missing a couple of the best ones.

Well, let’s say you’re in charge of the SEC. Your conference has made some massive strides in men’s college basketball over the last decade, becoming a league that offers much more than just Kentucky and the occasional hot team or two. You’ve been a top-four conference in terms of KenPom rating in each of the last four years.

However, in this exercise, you’re aligned with the second group.

On Monday, the SEC announced the conference matchups for the 2024-25 men’s basketball season — which will be its first as a 16-team league, with the arrivals of Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12.

For the past decade, the SEC has had a scheduling format where each team played three permanent opponents both home and away each year. For Auburn, those opponents were Alabama, Georgia and Ole Miss. Each team would also play two more home-and-away combos, which would rotate. The remaining eight teams were played once — four at home and four on the road — for a total of 18 conference games.

The expansion that brought Oklahoma and Texas into the SEC meant the league had to change its format. Some fans wondered if adding two more teams meant the SEC would add more conference games to its schedule.

The answer, which was settled back at Spring Meetings in 2022, was a firm “no.”

The SEC decided to stay at 18 conference games. The new format will feature two permanent home-and-away opponents, one rotating home-and-away combo, and six home games and six road games against the remaining schools.

Auburn just so happened to get its traditional three permanent opponents for the first year in this format, playing Alabama, Georgia and Ole Miss two times each. The Tigers will host Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee. They will travel to Kentucky, LSU, South Carolina, Texas, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.

While the scheduling format was decided two years ago, the reveal earlier this week was a reminder that the SEC will be the only one of the “power conferences” in men’s college basketball with an 18-game league schedule.

The rest are at 20. Even while five mid-major conferences that are smaller in size have made the move to 20, the SEC has stayed put.

But it doesn’t really need to stay that way.

What the rest of the power conferences do

Like the SEC, the Big 12 had an 18-game schedule last season. In prior years, the 10-team conference played a double round-robin for its 18 games. Last year, it had a modified format after adding BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF, while Oklahoma and Texas still had one more year.

But now the Big 12 — which has been rated as the toughest conference in the country for the last three seasons running — is making the jump to 20 games in its new 16-team era after the additions of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.

That news was confirmed last week after Kansas head coach Bill Self talked about it on an NCAA-branded podcast.

“I’ll say this, we’re going to 20 games this year in our league,” Self said. “Last year, 18 (games), I think, totally beat the heck out of everybody. Our league was so competitive last year.”

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said a move to 20 games was likely last October, during the conference’s basketball media days. While Self reportedly didn’t want the move, the decision was ultimately made because most of the league’s coaches did.

• Big East: 11 teams, 20 conference games

• Big 12: Soon-to-be 16 teams, 20 conference games

• Big Ten: Soon-to-be 18 teams, 20 conference games

• ACC: Soon-to-be 18 teams, 20 conference games

• SEC: Soon-to-be 16 teams, 18 conference games

The Big 12 will join three other power conferences at 20 games. The Big Ten has had a 20-game schedule since the 2018-19 season, after coaches voted for it. (Purdue head coach Matt Painter said at the time that “it helps finances, it helps your fans, it helps from an exposure standpoint.”) The ACC made the same move a year later.

The Big East jumped up to 20 games in 2021-22, after the addition of UConn made it an 11-team league with a nice and neat double round-robin. And the now-pretty-much-dead Pac-12 went to 20 games that same year, even though it only had… 12 teams. (We didn’t truly appreciate how the conference actually stuck to its number.)

Meanwhile, the SEC has stayed put at 18 games, which it has had since Texas A&M and Missouri joined the conference before the 2012-13 season. Another round of expansion could have been a reason to join the rest of major men’s college basketball, but it didn’t happen.

(It’s also important to make the distinction that this is a men’s college basketball discussion instead of a women’s college basketball one. That’s because women’s league schedules are usually smaller than the men’s, because their conference tournaments start one week earlier.)

Why the SEC stayed at 18 — and why the ACC thought about going back to it

Back in 2022, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told reporters that a 20-game idea was discussed, but the league decided to remain at 18.

“Eighteen allows a pretty effective rotation,” Sankey said. “A lot of comfort with that. The ability to have nonconference games scheduled, which we still believe are valuable.”

Of course, a move to 20 games isn’t going to be universally accepted by a league’s coaches and administrators. Self’s aversion to the Big 12 jumping up to that number is proof of that.

And even the conferences that have already made that move aren’t always 100% sold on it.

Back in March, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said that the league was reconsidering a move back down to 18 in men’s basketball after it added the geographically hilarious trio of Cal, Stanford and SMU.

Here’s what friend of the newsletter Nicole Auerbach wrote about the ACC’s discussions:

“We went from 18 to 20 games (in 2019-20) alongside the advent of the NET — that came in around the same time,” Phillips said. “Except for one year, all of our other seasons have trended way below where we’ve been in the past. With games 19 and 20, half your league loses twice.” Phillips added that the number of additional losses will rise to 18 next year when Stanford, Cal and SMU join the league.

The shift from 18 to 20 arose out of the need to create additional inventory for the then-new ACC Network. But it also takes away opportunities for flexibility in nonconference scheduling or, for a league like the ACC, chances to get resume-boosting wins that help both the league’s reputation and its metrics.

“We’re really, really working hard on this,” Phillips said. “We get our basketball coaches together in May, and the goal is to have a presentation for them about the road and the path forward because we can’t continue to live with what’s happened the last two or three years. It’s not reflective of the teams and the play that comes out of this conference.

“We have to fix it. We have to find a path forward that allows us greater access to the tournament.”

As it stands right now, the ACC is on track to stay at 20 games in men’s basketball, even with the expansion and the commissioner’s stated concerns.

The same goes for the Big Ten, which announced in January it would stay at 20 games after adding USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, because it “allows for non-conference scheduling flexibility, is consistent with peer schedule formats and maximizes opportunities for NCAA postseason berths.”

Keep all of that in mind as we move forward.

The non-conference scheduling factor

The 18 vs. 20 debate in the SEC is similar to the 8 vs. 9 one it faces in football. A lot has been written about the scheduling war in football, which has been kicked down the road for at least two years with the 8-game confirmations in 2024 and 2025.

Like in football, having a smaller number of conference games hasn’t necessarily hurt the SEC. The league is in a new golden age for men’s basketball quality. But the SEC hasn’t produced a national champion since Kentucky in 2012, and Florida’s back-to-back in 2006 and 2007 are the only other titles since the mid-1990s.

An SEC basketball season is a meat grinder — a real test of depth, physicality and mindset over the course of two months and some change. Yet there are conferences that are just as tough, if not tougher, that are playing even more league games.

The SEC would benefit from putting itself on the same level as its peers in the Big East, the Big 12, the Big Ten and the ACC. In terms of resume comparisons come Selection Sunday, having two more (usually) quality opponents would help teams.

To be fair to Sankey and the SEC, playing 18 conference games instead of 20 does give teams more flexibility when it comes to scheduling. But are SEC teams taking those two extra non-conference games and playing more power opponents?

Last season, SEC teams averaged 4.6 non-conference opponents from power leagues on their schedules. Tennessee led the way at seven, while Ole Miss was at the bottom at two. (That would explain the fast rise and fall of the Rebels’ stock last season.) Most of the conference had either four or five.

Let’s look at how that compares to other power conferences that play 20 league games. Last season, Big Ten teams averaged 3.5 non-conference power opponents, with the vast majority at either three or four. Wisconsin played five, while Minnesota only had one. It’s also worth noting that Purdue played four, plus Gonzaga.

ACC teams, meanwhile, averaged 3.8 non-conference power opponents. More than half of the league had four, while two teams had five (Miami and Notre Dame) and three teams had three (Clemson, Florida State and Virginia Tech). Boston College was the lone outlier at two. Granted, one of those non-conference games for most ACC members came from the SEC, due to the leagues’ new yearly challenge.

Some variations in the numbers can come down to luck of the draw in multi-team events like the Maui Invitational or Auburn’s trip to the Legends Classic in Brooklyn. The Tigers opened with Notre Dame and could have played a second in Oklahoma State but got Saint Bonaventure instead. And not all power-conference teams are created equal, even when you compare them to mid-majors. There’s a big difference between the WCC’s Gonzaga and the Big East’s DePaul.

But strength of schedule is mostly influenced by how many power-conference opponents a team plays in a given season. Those are more likely to be the bigger Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2 games for the NET ratings and other metrics that will help you come tournament time.

Similarly sized conferences that play 20 league games averaged around one fewer power opponent in non-con play than SEC teams. It’s not like all SEC teams are taking those two extra non-conference slots and loading up their schedules even more. The 20-game leagues end up getting more power-conference foes on average.

The result is, on the whole, more quality opponents and better overall schedules. It gives fans more quality basketball to watch, sacrificing a paycheck game for (at least) another matchup against a true peer program. Most Auburn fans would probably have taken the Tigers dropping Penn or Southeastern Louisiana from last season’s slate to get a home game against, say, Tennessee or Florida.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

A quicker and more balanced schedule rotation

In addition to the benefits of being even with the other power conferences and beefing up your teams’ tournament resumes, a 20-game format would also make for a better and more flexible rotation than staying at 18 games.

While the Big 12 hasn’t announced how it will play 20 games with 16 teams just yet, the easiest solution is three permanent home-and-away opponents, two rotating home-and-away opponents, and five home and five away games against the remaining 10 teams.

For individual teams, an ideal schedule rotation is going to come down to timing and a little bit of luck. In the SEC’s current 18-game format, that rotating home-and-away combo could really help you or really hurt you when compared to who everybody else has to play. But playing through the whole rotation — that is, have a two-game set against everybody in the league — will take 13 seasons.

In a 20-game format, the SEC could play the whole rotation in just six seasons, since you’re rotating two teams through the group of 12 non-permanent opponents each year. That way, if the SEC wants to change up permanent opponents or make any other tweaks, it could easily do so in less than half the time of the 18-game format.

The challenge, naturally, would be coming up with three permanent opponents for all 16 teams. There are always going to be disagreements and differing opinions, which is part of the reason why it’s taking the football side of the SEC so long to agree on a potential nine-game format.

But here’s a stab at it, giving preference to traditional rivalries, geographical ties and entertaining matchups that would make sense annually:

• Alabama: Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State

• Arkansas: Kentucky, LSU, Texas A&M

• Auburn: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee

• Florida: Alabama, Georgia, Vanderbilt

• Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina

• Kentucky: Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee

• LSU: Arkansas, Ole Miss, Texas A&M

• Ole Miss: Mississipi State, Texas, Vanderbilt

• Mississippi State: Alabama, Missouri, Ole Miss

• Missouri: Mississippi State, Oklahoma, South Carolina

• Oklahoma: Missouri, Texas, Texas A&M

• South Carolina: Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri

• Tennessee: Auburn, Kentucky, Vanderbilt

• Texas: Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Texas A&M

• Texas A&M: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas

• Vanderbilt: Florida, Ole Miss, Tennessee

The historic rivalries are all protected here, along with some border scuffles that make the most sense. The most entertaining portion, though, is ensuring two matchups for the current and former schools of John Calipari, Bruce Pearl and Chris Beard.

Was this whole exercise an elaborate way to rewrite the wrong of the SEC not having Arkansas and Kentucky play twice this season? Pretty much.

And if you’re wondering if Pearl would welcome having both Alabama and Tennessee as permanent opponents, consider the fact that he said in 2014 that he wanted Florida and Kentucky — then the clear-cut class of the conference — to be part of Auburn’s trio when the league adopted its new format. He said that before coaching a single game with the Tigers and was four years away from making the Big Dance.

While there are a couple of matchups with not much juice that just had to be made in order to complete the matrix, the end result is a league schedule with a larger number of headliner two-game sets. And, again, everybody will get at least one home-and-road combo with everybody else in the SEC in six years instead of 13.

For Auburn fans, imagine dropping a couple of non-conference opponents from next season’s schedule in order to get a home game with Kentucky and a road trip to Texas. That seems more enticing than the current setup, right?

When would the two extra games be played?

Now, there’s one more aspect of an expanded SEC schedule to consider: The literal timing of the games. Right now, an 18-game schedule fits nice and easy from the first weekend in January to the first weekend in March, with one off date for everybody in the process. Adding two more games throws a wrench into that.

Let’s just look at what the other conferences do. The Big East started conference play in mid-December last year and went 20 games straight, including a couple of off dates. The Big Ten and the ACC, meanwhile, opened in early December.

The SEC could adopt a similar format and use it as a way to promote the product before the start of the New Year, when more casual fans start to watch. During the week after the SEC Championship Game in football — before bowl games get underway — have everybody play a home and an away conference game before finishing up the month with the rest of non-league action.

This could act as a curtain-raiser for SEC basketball, hitting right after college football season starts winding down and taking full advantage of the post-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas/New Year’s gap in college sports scheduling. Teams could energize their December schedules and have time to adjust from what they learned from those first conference matchups before hitting the rest of the slate.

Granted, the decision-makers for SEC basketball would have to agree to a jump from 18 conference games to 20. Perhaps a majority of the league’s coaches aren’t on board with the move. Maybe leadership has reservations about adding extra losses to teams’ resumes, like Phillips talked about for the ACC. Maybe the SEC is waiting to expand even further, until it’s an earth-swallowing size fit for ESPN’s purposes.

It’s still a shame that, in what is such a strong era of men’s basketball for the league, the SEC is the only power conference that is staying at 18 games. Teams should want to be comparable to the rest of their rivals jockeying for seeing, and fans should be able to benefit from watching more high-quality hoops.

Staying at 18 hasn’t exactly hurt SEC basketball. But it hasn’t helped, either.

If the SEC wants to keep moving forward as a true force in the sport, joining the rest of its big-league brethren at 20 games would be a great step in that direction.

Send in your questions for this week’s Aubserver Mailbag to the1andonlyJF@gmail.com.