Hype Train Incoming: SEC basketball is about to lay waste to the ACC

It is no secret that last year SEC basketball enjoyed to best single season by any conference in the history of the sport.

The SEC went 185-23 against the rest of the nation. It finished with a 37-18 record against the non-SEC Top 25. It set a record with 14 teams in the NCAA tournament: Half of the Sweet 16 came from the South. The SEC accounted for four of the Elite Eight, half of the Final Four, and the SEC Champion Gators cut down the nets at the end of the year.

It was not a flash pan; the quality was there all season. But the SEC really got on people’s radars last season when the conference simply plastered the ACC in the annual challenge, 14-2, with 10 of those wins coming by double-digits.

Get ready for it again, at least as far as the hype goes.

Yesterday, the pairings were announced for the 2025-2026 Challenge, and the SEC is set to reprise last season’s domination of Tobacco Road:

• Florida at Duke
• North Carolina at Kentucky
• Virginia at Texas
• NC State at Auburn
• Clemson at Alabama
• Louisville at Arkansas
• Oklahoma at Wake Forest
• SMU at Vanderbilt
• Texas A&M at Pitt
• Mississippi State at Georgia Tech
• Miami at Ole Miss
• LSU at Boston College
• Virginia Tech at South Carolina
• Tennessee at Syracuse
• Missouri at Notre Dame
• Georgia at Florida State

Looking at these pairings, only Duke is likely to be a Vegas favorite in their matchup, with perhaps two other tossups — and there’s no guarantee the Devils are favored either. And, among the name brands or squads on the rise, contests where the ACC could have had a fighting chance at home, the ACC drew very tough road games: UNC heads to Rupp; the checkbook darling Louisville Cardinals get a date in Fayetteville; NC State has a lot of new talent…that they get to take to Auburn; Clemson is rebuilding and heads to Tuscaloosa.

And the middle-class or bottom-end games don’t present better matchups for the ACC either. Under KenPom’s final 2025 rankings, the ACC would be an underdog in 15 of these games. Using Torvik’s 2026 projections, the ACC is projected to be an underdog in…15 of these games. Even lowly LSU is about 90 spots higher on the analytic rankings than BC. Ditto South Carolina, who are also playing at home.

Many of the games should be a bit closer this season; I doubt we see another half-dozen games decided by 20+ points. And the ACC has upgraded talent at a few key programs. But the bottom line hasn’t really changed, and the narrative that emerges after that week is going to be similar, but familiar: The SEC is a force to be reckoned with.

Again.