Rece Davis raves over SEC basketball strength: 'I don't think we've seen anything like it'

The SEC has long since been the premier conference in college football. Today, football is still important to fans, but basketball has also emerged as a sport that the conference dominates.

ESPN personality Rece Davis has taken note of that dominance too. In an appearance on Get Up Thursday morning, he praised the SEC, sharing that he doesn’t remember the last time he saw something like this success from a conference.

“I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it in terms of depth, in terms of quality depth and national champion contenders,” Davis said. “Now, those three teams that are on the one-line [Auburn, Alabama, Florida] are the three that I think could win a national championship. The others are all good teams. They’re capable of upsetting highly ranked teams.”

In the latest AP Poll, nine out of 16 SEC teams were ranked in the Top 25. On top of that, ESPN’s latest bracketology has 13 SEC schools making the NCAA Tournament field.

“They’re capable of making deep runs, but all of them to me other than Auburn, Alabama, and Florida have some offensive liabilities and can go into some offensive lulls that I think can hurt them over the course of a long tournament,” Davis said. “But I think the depth and the competitive character of the entire conference is really as good as we’ve ever seen.”

College basketball analyst Jay Bilas was on alongside Rece Davis. He agreed with Davis, giving some historical context to just how good the SEC has been this season.

“It’s the best basketball conference top to bottom, relative to the field, that we have ever seen. They put up numbers that compare favorably to the mid-80s in the ACC, but people forget the ACC had eight teams back then. It’s a lot easier to have eight good teams than it is 16. It has been remarkable, but that doesn’t mean that Houston or Duke can’t win the national championship. Nobody’s saying that because the ACC’s the best conference, automatically they’re going to have the entire Elite Eight or the entire Final Four, that’s not what anybody’s saying,” Bilas said.

“But no other league can match what the SEC has done this year and historically it matches what any other league has done ever. I think it’s the most powerful league we have seen ever, relative to the field.”

The Auburn Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide are currently 10-1 in conference play each. That puts them atop the SEC standings, holding a two-game lead on the Florida Gators and Texas A&M Aggies. It is also setting up a monster game on Saturday when Auburn and Alabama meet on the court for the first of two games.