At about 11 o’clock tonight, Tennessee’s basketball game against Gonzaga will end and the Southeastern Conference will finally get down to the business of playing league brothers.

Never mind that the Big Ten started playing conference contests before 2008 ended. The ACC — as any North Carolina fan will painfully tell you — tipped off its league season over the past weekend. The Pac-10 also is in high gear.

But the SEC apparently wanted to wait until the BCS title game was over, which is somewhat understandable and predictable, given that the league has played in the past three football championship games and will win its third straight if Florida downs Oklahoma on Thursday night.

So despite having won four of the last 13 Final Fours — and reaching two more title games in that span — the league that gave us Pistol Pete Maravich, Bernard King, Shaquille O’Neal, Dominique Wilkins and Pat Riley appears to still worship at the altar of the oblong ball.

Or maybe it merely wishes to put its best foot forward for as long as possible. One glance at the latest (Jeff) Sagarin ratings — which some believe most closely mirrors the NCAA’s numbers — will tell you the SEC is only the sixth best basketball league in the land, trailing the top-ranked ACC, Big Ten, Big East, Big 12 and Pac-10.

And if you quit paying attention to this conference in November, those numbers would make perfect sense. After all, when Mercer can defeat both Alabama and Auburn before Thanksgiving, when VMI can embarrass Kentucky at Rupp Arena, when Arkansas can stumble at Missouri State, when Georgia can lose at home to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Vanderbilt falls by 19 at home to Illinois-Chicago, what do you expect?

It’s no wonder that Tennessee is the only league member ranked in either major poll. Almost as embarrassing, only Arkansas, Florida and LSU are receiving votes besides the Volunteers.

Kentucky, which owns pretty much every important SEC basketball record, can’t even get a single vote in either poll. Guess the voters had drunk too much eggnog to be impressed by that 102-58 win over Tennessee State.

Yet for all the surface mediocrity, this is a conference still capable of making major noise come March.

Arkansas shocked then-No. 4 Oklahoma last month. Tennessee owns 12-point triumphs over Big East contenders Georgetown and Marquette. Mississippi State won by 28 over Western Kentucky, which beat Louisville by 14. Auburn has won at Virginia, and Florida nearly defeated Syracuse.

Even Kentucky, which hasn’t beaten a ranked nonconference opponent in more than two years, knocked off West Virginia early on, and the Mountaineers just joined the Associated Press poll at No. 25.

In fact, as mediocre as Kentucky currently seems, if the Wildcats ever find a capable third scorer to complement guard Jodie Meeks (24.4 ppg) and forward Patrick Patterson (19.5), the Big Blue should have little trouble reaching their 18th straight NCAA Tournament. They might even reach the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2005.

But Kentucky is far from the only team with plenty of potential to join Tennessee as an NCAA tourney lock. Despite Tuesday’s tough loss at Clemson, Alabama looks better each week with senior point guard Ronald Steele. Additionally, Tuesday’s win over Texas proved that Arkansas is recapturing some of the swagger that made it a Final Four threat throughout the 1990s. And LSU, which enters conference action 12-1, could be the sleeper of the bunch under new coach Trent Johnson.

“I still believe that when Selection Sunday rolls around,” ESPN analyst Jimmy Dykes said during the Arkansas game Tuesday, “the SEC will get at least five or six teams in the tournament.”

The league’s .767 winning percentage against nonconference foes before Tuesday is its best such mark since the 2003-04 season and its third best over the past 11 years.

So the best may yet lie ahead. Besides, SEC fans, what else have you got to get excited about between now and the start of spring football?