With three games remaining in the regular season, the race for the SEC regular-season championship and tournament seeding is coming into sharp focus. Here is a breakdown of what is at stake for South Carolina and the rest of the conference.
What a Win Means for South Carolina
The Gamecocks sit atop the SEC standings at 12-1, and a victory over Ole Miss on Sunday would clinch their 10th SEC regular-season championship in the last 14 seasons and their fifth consecutive title. It would also extend a remarkable run that dates back to 2014, during which South Carolina has won either the SEC regular-season or tournament championship — or both — every single year except 2019.
For South Carolina to clinch both the regular-season title and the top seed in the SEC Tournament, they need to beat Ole Miss, or see Vanderbilt, and Texas both lose on Sunday. For an outright regular-season championship, the Gamecocks need a win combined with losses from both Vanderbilt and Texas.
Elsewhere in the standings, a South Carolina win or an LSU loss eliminates the Tigers from regular-season title contention. LSU has already been eliminated from the top seed in the SEC Tournament. At the bottom of the table, an Auburn win or an Arkansas loss would officially relegate the Razorbacks to last place. Florida, Missouri, Texas A&M, Auburn, and Arkansas have all been eliminated from top-eight seeding in the SEC Tournament, though Florida, Missouri, and Texas A&M remain in a three-way tie for the eighth seed on record but trail Kentucky on tiebreakers.
Current SEC Standings
South Carolina leads the conference at 12-1, followed by Vanderbilt and Texas tied at 10-3, LSU at 9-4, Ole Miss at 8-5, and Oklahoma and Tennessee also tied at 8-5. Kentucky sits at 7-6, with Alabama and Georgia both at 6-7. Mississippi State is at 5-8, Florida, Missouri, and Texas A&M are each 4-9, Auburn is 3-10, and Arkansas brings up the rear at 0-13.
Oklahoma and Tennessee will settle their tie when the two sides meet Sunday. The three-way deadlock between Florida, Missouri, and Texas A&M is complicated, with each having gone 1-1 in head-to-head matchups — Texas A&M beat Florida, Florida beat Missouri, and Missouri beat Texas A&M.
Tiebreaker Procedures
Should teams finish level on conference record, the SEC uses a structured tiebreaker system to determine seeding. For two-team ties, the procedure works through head-to-head results first, then winning percentage against the highest-seeded common opponents working downward, followed by road conference record, head-to-head point differential, winning percentage against Quad 1 opponents, winning percentage against Quad 2 opponents, and finally NCAA NET ranking.
For ties involving three or more teams, the process begins with the best winning percentage among the tied teams in games played against each other, before working through the same subsequent criteria used in two-team scenarios. If the multi-team process narrows the field to two teams still level, the two-team tiebreaker formula then takes over from that point.
