SEC Unfiltered: The league solved its men's basketball woes, thanks to Bruce Pearl and Co.

Welcome to SEC Unfiltered, the USA TODAY NETWORK's newsletter on SEC sports. Look for this newsletter in your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Today, SEC columnist Blake Toppmeyer takes over:

In 2016, the SEC hired Mike Tranghese to a fancy job title that basically equated to this: Fix the conference's prolonged slumber in men's basketball.

The SEC is and always will be a conference powered by football, but the conference also ranks among the nation's leaders in several other sports. Men's hoops repeatedly lagged behind.

But by hiring Tranghese, the former Big East commissioner who turned that conference into a basketball behemoth, the SEC made it known that it no longer would stand for men's hoops mediocrity.

Three times during a four-year span from 2013-16, the SEC produced just three qualifiers for the NCAA Tournament. It twice trailed the Atlantic-10 and the American Athletic Conference in NCAA qualifiers during that span.

Today, the SEC ranks among the nation's best men's basketball conferences. With just more than six weeks remaining until Selection Sunday, the SEC is positioned to qualify as many as eight teams for the NCAA Tournament.

Wednesday's bracket projection from ESPN's expert Joe Lunardi projected six SEC teams in the 68-team field: Auburn (No. 1 overall seed), Kentucky (four-seed), Tennessee (four-seed), LSU (four-seed), Alabama (five-seed) and Florida (12-seed).

Arkansas and Mississippi State were among Lunardi's first four teams out of the field, while Texas A&M was among his next four out.

If the SEC qualifies eight teams, that would match 2018 for the conference's record for most qualifiers.

Following its eight-bid year in 2018, the SEC produced seven qualifiers in 2019 and six in 2021, after the pandemic caused the cancellation of the 2020 tournament.

Hiring better coaches is a key piece to the conference's surge.

Auburn hired Bruce Pearl in 2014. Pearl led four programs – Division II Southern Indiana, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Tennessee and then Auburn – to their best NCAA finishes in program history.

The following year, Mississippi State hired Ben Howland, who led UCLA to three Final Four appearances, and Tennessee hired Rick Barnes, who in 2003 led Texas to its first Final Four appearance since 1947, when the tournament featured eight teams.

Each proved to be a good hire.

The next men's basketball item for the SEC to tackle: Producing a national champion for the first time since Kentucky cut down the nets in 2012.

Auburn might be the solution. Pearl's Tigers rank among the favorites to win the prize this year.

Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer. If you enjoy Blake’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SEC solved men's basketball woes thanks to Bruce Pearl and others