It’s hard to believe, but with the close of January, we’ve officially hit the halfway point of the SEC schedule. This season might not have gone the way many teams thought it would, but there is still plenty of time for some struggling teams to make a play for an NCAA Tournament spot. Though they will likely have to knock off some really good teams to make this happen. With just over a month remaining in the 2025-26 season, a few teams have started to separate themselves from the rest of the conference, but as we’ve learned many times this year, it just takes one off night to shake things up. As we enter the final full month of the regular season, here are the latest SEC basketball power rankings.
16. Oklahoma Sooners (11-11, 1-8)
Expectations weren’t necessarily high coming into the season, considering the upside of the offense. However, after losing their last eight games, the Sooners have hit rock bottom. The only upside during SEC play is that Oklahoma has kept most games close. Any hopes of a turnaround for the Sooners seem to have slipped away as the Porter Moser experiment appears to have run its course at Oklahoma. With losses to Arkansas and Texas this week, the Sooners would need to win out to finish, at best, .500 in conference play, something Moser has never achieved while in Norman.
15. South Carolina Gamecocks (11-11, 2-7)
South Carolina hasn’t been a very good team this season, but even by their own standards, the Gamecocks’ 47-point loss to Florida this week was embarrassing. And to make things worse, South Carolina dropped its very next game to LSU in overtime. Lamont Paris provided some hope a couple of seasons ago, but now it looks like that was just an anomaly. The only thing keeping the Gamecocks out of the bottom spot in these rankings is how poorly Oklahoma has performed. But if there are more wildly lopsided losses in its future, South Carolina could once again fall to the bottom.
14. LSU Tigers (14-8, 2-7)
LSU did what it needed to do against South Carolina to avoid its second four-game losing streak of the season. The Tigers desperately needed a win after losing to Mississippi State by 14 points only a few days prior. There have been flashes from LSU this season, but it's never really put together an inspiring stretch of games. With two wins halfway through SEC play, LSU has a chance to improve on its three conference wins from a season ago, though with their talent level, I wouldn’t expect many more wins from the Tigers this year.
13. Mississippi State Bulldogs (11-11, 3-6)
The Bulldogs have been a competitive team throughout most of conference play, but even then, they haven’t found many wins. Josh Hubbard and, at times, Jayden Epps have done their best on the offensive end of the court to keep this team in games, but without any semblance of a defense, the team has struggled. Though against LSU this week, the Bulldogs did look like the defensive-minded MSU teams from previous years. With only nine games remaining, Mississippi State is in serious danger of finishing without an 8-10 SEC record for the first time since 2021.