{"id":170032,"date":"2025-12-17T09:30:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=170032"},"modified":"2025-12-16T20:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T01:33:10","slug":"college-basketball-sec-rankings-for-12-17-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/12\/17\/college-basketball-sec-rankings-for-12-17-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"College Basketball SEC Rankings for 12-17-2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The SEC may not reach the lofty heights of last season, but it\u2019s still one of the best leagues in the country. What sets the SEC apart is that there are no free wins. No teams in the league sit outside the top 100 on KenPom, which no other league can say. Every game in this league will be a war once conference play starts.<\/p>\n

NCAA Basketball: SEC Rankings<\/h2>\n

1. Vanderbilt<\/h3>\n
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Photo Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve got the Commodores sitting here for now, but I am going to need to see it from them in conference play to keep them here. They\u2019ve been the surprise of the season, and their guard play has been great with Duke Miles and Tyler Tanner, but I need to see them do it against top P5 competition to be turned into a full believer.<\/p>\n

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Also, make sure to check out our latest ACC Rankings<\/a>!<\/h4>\n
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2. Florida<\/h3>\n
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Photo Credit: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The defending champs have hit some roadblocks, but I\u2019m not going to knock them too much for losing a game to UConn off of a 5-second call that was called a wee bit early. Xaivian Lee has much improved in the last few weeks, hopefully fixing the guard problem that this team had to start the year.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

3. Alabama<\/h3>\n

\"Aden<\/p>\n

We\u2019re just going to have to get used to Alabama games being very volatile due to the style that Nate Oats wants to play. The Crimson Tide want to play a lot of possessions and shoot a lot of 3s. This is going to lead to some games that they lose (or win) by a margin that is not representative of the gap between the two teams. Case in point – the blowout loss to Arizona over the weekend.<\/p>\n

4. Tennessee<\/h3>\n

\"Tennessee<\/p>\n

The Vols are on a bit of a slide, but I still believe. This team has a legitimate top-10 point guard in Ja\u2019Kobi Gillespie and a top-10 draft pick in Nate Ament. Those two pieces are enough to win you some games, but they are going to need more from the supporting cast in order to be real contenders.<\/p>\n

5. Arkansas<\/h3>\n

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A big game from Trevon Brazile powered the Razorbacks to a huge non-conference win against Texas Tech. Brazile\u2019s senior year breakout, coupled with a strong freshman class, has John Calipari with a team that could very easily make it back to the Sweet Sixteen for the second straight season.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

6. Kentucky<\/h3>\n

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If you were to look up \u201cbounce-back win\u201d in the dictionary, there should be a picture of Kentucky\u2019s 72-60 victory over Indiana last Saturday. Mark Pope\u2019s crew had been a massive disappointment through a month in the season, but showed flashes of the team they could be in that key win.<\/p>\n

7. Auburn<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Tigers have had a light schedule over the last few weeks, only playing three games total from December 6 to December 28. This should give them plenty of time to practice and gel as an offense. Tahaad Pettiford is still finding his footing with this new roster and has not been as effective as last season.<\/p>\n

8. Georgia<\/h3>\n

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Mike White\u2019s Bulldogs continue to rack up wins, throttling Cincinnati 84-65 over the weekend. They\u2019re doing so by playing at a super-fast pace, ranking as the 5th-fastest tempo in the entire country. Can they keep it up in conference play?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

9. LSU<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I do have my concerns about the defense being played by the guards, but LSU continues to rack up wins in non-conference action. A win over SMU should age well and could be a key piece to an NCAA Tournament resume. Mike Nwoko has had a massive breakout after seldom playing at Miami the last few seasons.<\/p>\n

10. Texas<\/h3>\n
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Photo Credit: Dustin Safranek-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Longhorns represented themselves well at UConn last Friday \u2013 they had the lead cut to 5 and were shooting 2 free throws with 3 minutes to play before UConn hit two 3-pointers to blow the game open. Sean Miller really has this team defending and rebounding, which is a breath of fresh air to Longhorns fans after two years of Rodney Terry.<\/p>\n

For more great college basketball analysis, check out DrRoto.com<\/a>!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The SEC may not reach the lofty heights of last season, but it\u2019s still one of the best leagues in the country. What sets the SEC apart is that there are no free wins. No teams in the league sit outside the top 100 on KenPom, which no other league can say. Every game in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5637,"featured_media":170038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,773],"tags":[1504,779,1412,777,2382,776,1434,1436,1763,1044,789],"class_list":["post-170032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-college-basketball","tag-alabama-crimson-tide","tag-arkansas-razorbacks","tag-auburn-tigers","tag-florida-gators","tag-georgia-bulldogs","tag-kentucky-wildcats","tag-lsu-tigers","tag-sec-basketball","tag-tennessee-volunteers","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-vanderbilt-commodores"],"modified_by":"Doug Henderson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170032"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170046,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170032\/revisions\/170046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}