College athletes are still technically students, so what better way to assess a team’s season than by giving them a grade?
That’s the approach ESPN took on Wednesday when college basketball writer Myron Metcalf took one last look at the 2024-25 college basketball season. Metcalf rounded out his series of conference breakdowns by assigning all 16 SEC teams a grade between A and F.
What did the conference and national champions get?
An A, naturally. No, plus and minus grades are not a part of this system. We checked.
“Last summer, Walter Clayton Jr. withdrew from the NBA draft to return to Florida after a season worthy of an All-SEC first-team selection,” Metcalf wrote. “He wanted to prepare for the pros while helping the Gators win at the highest level in college basketball. Todd Golden had the solution: He moved Clayton to point guard and added talent like Florida Atlantic transfer Alijah Martin, which helped the Gators capture their third national championship (and their first since 2007).”
Florida isn’t the only SEC team to earn that coveted top grade, though. The SEC earned seven A grades from Metcalf, which is easily the most of any conference Metcalf has covered. He released the same list for the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, and Big 12 earlier in the month.
Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Vanderbilt are the other programs from the conference with an A. In the B tier are Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. That’s 13 out of 16 teams with a strong grade. LSU, South Carolina and Texas underperformed this year, earning Ds all around, but it’s no surprise to see the SEC finish without a single F in the conference.
It’s a shame that Metcalf didn’t break the no plus or minus rule for this breakdown, though. Florida wasn’t taken seriously as a title contender until the final days of the regular season. Even then, a No. 1 seed was not guaranteed. Golden built the perfect beast, and that kind of planning and execution deserves a bit more praise than the rest.
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