As first-year commissioner, Greg Sankey did not put swagger in his travel bag for the trip to the 2016 Southeastern Conference Tournament.
“I was here three years ago thinking perhaps we’d only have two teams in the NCAA Tournament,” he said Wednesday.
Three SEC teams received bids to the 2016 NCAA Tournament. The number of SEC teams playing in the NCAA Tournament grew to five in 2017 and a record eight in 2018.
Welcome to upwardly mobile SEC basketball, which is on display here this weekend. The talk at this year’s SEC Tournament is of seven or eight or more teams being part of Selection Sunday.