FAYETTEVILLE — Tennessee, Florida and Kentucky divided up 30 votes from a media panel picking an SEC overall basketball champion.

No West team got a vote.

The first-team All-SEC team selected by the media was all-East with Tennessee’s Tyler Smith, Kentucky’s Patrick Patterson, Florida’s Nick Calathes, South Carolina’s Devan Downey and Vanderbilt’s A. J. Ogilvy.

“It’s an Eastern bias,” Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl said. “I think it’s New York’s fault.

“ Blame it on the Yankees. Those damn Yankees.”

Pearl was joking, of course.

Media members who follow the SEC favored the East in preseason balloting because they’re going by past performance.

The East has dominated the West since the SEC expanded by adding Arkansas and South Carolina for the 1991-1992 season to form a 12-team conference with two divisions.

East teams are 100 games over. 500 against the West — 356-256 — for a. 590 winning percentage and have taken the interdivision season series 13 of 17 years.

Last year, the East finished with a 23-13 advantage, the ninth consecutive year it has bested the West.

“There’s no doubt about it, the East has really been a beast,” Georgia Coach Dennis Felton said. “It won’t always be this way, but the numbers do speak for themselves.

“ I think the East is the toughest division in the best basketball conference in the country. That’s just the way it is right now.”

Before becoming Arkansas ’ coach last season, John Pelphrey played for Kentucky and was a Florida assistant, so he’s had experience in both divisions.

Pelphrey said an argument can be made for the East being the better division based on the statistics, but that there are no easy SEC games.

“Having played in this league, been an assistant coach in this league and now a head coach in this league,” Pelphery said, “you understand that every time you lay your head down at night, you had better have done everything you can from a recruiting and coaching standpoint and motivating standpoint to put your team in the best situation you possibly can.

“ Because there are really, really good coaches and really, really good players — no matter what division — in this league.”

Kentucky’s presence in the East is the No. 1 factor for its advantage over the West. The Wildcats have more victories (1, 966 ) than any other college team and have won 43 SEC championships, including seven since 1995.

Since the SEC split into divisions, Kentucky has a 212-60 conference record.

“I think both sides are good, but obviously a team like Kentucky that traditionally has been so good can shift it one way or the other,” Alabama Coach Mark Gottfried said. “But I think it’s a deep league one through 12.”

In three of the four years in which the West had a winning record against the East — 1992, 1994 and 1995 — Arkansas led the way by going 14-2 in 1992 and 1994 to win outright SEC championships and 12-4 in 1995 to share the West title with Mississippi State.

Without a consistently powerful Arkansas, the West has topped the East just once (1999 ) in the past 13 years.

The Razorbacks are picked to finish sixth in the West this season, which points to more domination by the East.

Alabama and LSU, which will get back injured stars Ronald Steele and Tasmin Mitchell this season, are expected to contend for the West title.

“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘Do you think the SEC will be down this year ?’” Gottfried said. “My answer was — and this is my 11 th year as a coach in this league, which in dog years is 77 years that I’ve survived here — ‘I can’t tell you if I’ve ever seen a bad SEC team.’

“ I’ve seen some that are down, some teams that are rebuilding. But there are no bad teams in our league.

“ The difference between the top and the bottom is a narrow margin.”

Gottfried said Georgia winning the SEC Tournament last year after going 4-12 in conference play and finishing last in the East is a testament to the SEC’s balance from top to bottom.

“That shows you how close the teams are,” Gottfried said. “A shot here, a shot there, and the next thing you know, you could be 10-6 or 6-10. That’s how much parity there is in our league.”

The emergence of Florida as a national power has combined with Kentucky’s tradition to keep the East ahead of the West.

Under Coach Billy Donovan, the Gators have made three Final Four appearances since 2000, winning national titles in 2006 and 2007.

“What Billy Donovan has done at Florida is incredible,” said ESPN analyst Jimmy Dykes, a former Arkansas player and Kentucky assistant coach. “He’s brought them from being a nonfactor basketballwise when he got the job to winning back-to-back national championships.”

Tennessee is the SEC’s newest power, winning its first outright title in 41 years with a 14-2 conference record last season.

Pearl’s Vols are favored to win the title again.

“I picked them to win it,” Dykes said. “They could very well have the best all-around player in Tyler Smith, and he’s got a lot of guys to help him.

“ But I think right behind them has to be Florida, because Billy Donovan got his point across at the end of last year, what he expects out of that team.

“ I think Tennessee and Florida will be in a tussle all year long for control of the East.”

The SEC is the only one among the six power conferences without a team in the top eight in The Associated Press preseason poll. The Atlantic Coast Conference has No. 1 North Carolina and No. 8 Duke; the Big East has No. 2 Connecticut, No. 3 Louisville and No. 5 Pittsburgh; the Pacific-10 has No. 4 UCLA, and the Big Ten has No. 6 Michigan State.

The highest-ranked SEC teams are No. 14 Tennessee and No. 19 Florida.

Pelphrey said it’s “interesting” to hear talk of the SEC being down based on the theory it’s not as good as when Florida won back-to-back NCAA titles.