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Drake fans taunt SEC with 'overrated' chant in final seconds of upset win vs. Missouri

ns_headshot_2024-clearby:Nick Schultz•about 20 hours•

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Drake vs. Missouri in the 2025 NCAA Tournament
© Nick Tre. Smith-Imagn Images

When the NCAA Tournament got underway this week, 14 SEC teams made the field. That set a new record as the conference put together a historic regular season.

Through the first day of the Round of 64, though, three of those teams are heading home. Texas fell to Xavier in the First Four on Wednesday, Georgia dropped its matchup against Gonzaga and Missouri lost to Drake in the first round on Thursday. Auburn and Arkansas won their respective games and will advance to the second round, while the rest of the teams will play Friday.

As Drake pulled off the upset, the fans made sure to let the Mizzou faithful hear it. Chants of, “Overrated, SEC” broke out in Wichita as Drake got its first opening round victory since 1971.

The SEC emerged as the top conference in the country during the regular season, leading the nation in efficiency, according to KenPom. At +21.90, the league sat nearly four points ahead of the second-most efficient conference, the Big Ten.

With so many bids, though, came concerns about underperforming. ESPN’s Jay Bilas called back to the Big Ten to make that point, noting the league was once considered the best in the country. But when the NCAA Tournament came, Big Ten teams struggled to go deep into the bracket, and that meant the critics were ready to tee off.

“I think the strength and the numbers probably indicates that the league is gonna do well, but not every one of the 14 teams is gonna win,” Bilas said. “That’s just the nature of the tournament. There’s a random nature of it where you may not be playing well, you may have an injury here against a hot team. You’re gonna get clipped. That’s OK. What you don’t want to have happen is what happened to the Big Ten a few years ago.

“The Big Ten, they were recognized as the best conference in the country. They went into the tournament and basically all their teams kind of laid an egg and underperformed their seed significantly. What that did was allow outsiders to say, ‘See? You weren’t that good’ and to sort of degenerate the strength of the league during the regular season. I don’t think it works that way. I don’t think those two things are necessarily the same thing. But it’s certainly the way people look at it. You’ll have competitors that will come after you.”