Karl Ravech was duped by a facetious narrative about SEC basketball Tuesday night, and instead of owning up to it, he seems to be doubling down.

The SEC dominated college basketball the first two months of the season. But a troll narrative has emerged in recent weeks after the social media account @pickelo7 sarcastically posted about the SEC’s .500 winning percentage since starting conference play. The joke here is the fact that obviously a conference will have a .500 winning percentage when teams from the same league are playing against each other.

Tuesday night, however, Ravech appeared to fall for the narrative while calling a SEC game between Alabama and Texas on ESPN when he cited the conference’s 82-82 record since January 4th.

Karl Ravech…oh no

“Since January 4, into Tuesday, the SEC teams are 82-82…there’s no dominant group of teams” pic.twitter.com/TEn1QzPs1A

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 12, 2025

“We know how dominant they were in the nonconference season, the SEC,” Ravech said. “They were 185-23. Since January 4, into Tuesday, the SEC teams are 82-82. It’s not as if one team or two teams or three — they’re 82-82. There’s been no ability pull away, there’s no dominant group of teams.”

After seeing the clip of himself talking about that 82-82 record go viral Wednesday morning, Ravech weighed in to defend himself.

Just landed and see X is on fire. Simple explanation. Tongue in cheek 82-82 record was to illustrate any night either team can win and one will. Clearly very poor execution on my part. It is amazing that Alabama/Auburn have only lost once in such a great conference. That’s all.

— Karl Ravech (@karlravechespn) February 12, 2025

“Simple explanation,” Ravech wrote. “Tongue-in-cheek 82-82 record was to illustrate any night either team can win and one will. Clearly very poor execution on my part. It is amazing that Alabama/Auburn have only lost once in such a great conference. That’s all.”

The problem with this defense is that Ravech is still citing the 82-82 record as proof of parity. To be clear, it does not matter if the best teams are winning or the worst teams are winning, every single conference or division in every sport will have a .500 record during league play. So the 82-82 record the SEC had on Tuesday, the 87-87 record it has on Wednesday and the 90-90 record it will have on Thursday tells you absolutely nothing.

Most people watching the broadcast probably gave Ravech the benefit of the doubt that he was being tongue-in-cheek when he began talking about the SEC’s 82-82 record heading into play on Tuesday. But as the audience waited for him to reveal he was in on the joke, it just never happened. Maybe it truly was tongue-in-cheek and we’re just missing something. But his initial comments during the live broadcast and his defense on social media do little to imply Ravech was being tongue-in-cheek.