I think you underestimate the how much March Madness makes ($1.2b) and how much the P5 gets ($150m) and how much room basketball has to grow.
You take every FBS conference and plus the Big East and have a little extra realignment (like Gonzaga joins PAC/MWC) and you’d likely get every top 11 seed in the tournament outside of 5 seed St Mary’s.
If the SEC/B1G lead to way you can see them taking over management of the tournament, under the same organization as the CFP. Likely a very easy way to double their post season revenue that is too quick to be dismissed by people who simply too infatuated with the current tournament format.
On Kansas and geography, the graphic linked below was about Mizzou, but it also shows that Kansas is no way shape or form “too distant” from the SEC. They’d better tie Oklahoma/Mizzou into the conference, solidify KC as a SEC city (OU/KU/MU > ISU/KSU/OSU), and bring a bonafide basketball blueblood into the conference. Yes football is poor but when UT/OU are added with no tagalongs, the SEC could be use a lackluster fb school to boost other areas and give the kid Teri SEC teams some fodder.
https://www.columbiamissourian.com/sports/map-distance-from-columbia-to-sec-big-12-schools/image_d4ef5261-c9d0-5761-ac3d-0202a83fd568.html
Again this is only under the scenario that the SEC is going to 24 (18 or 20 and Kansas likely isn’t in the conversation) but gaining 3 new SEC states (NC, VA, KA), 2 adding 2 FB powers (FSU, Clemson), claiming all 4 basketball bluebloods (UK, KU, UNC, Duke) and making pair of defensive plays (protecting markets/recruiting territory from the B1G in Miami and VT) seem logical to me.
The only other realistic candidates remaining (assuming the SEC isn’t moving any further West than Texas and isn’t poaching B1G members or going after their footprint) are: Georgia Tech, NC State, West Virginia, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State. You can argue that they won’t go to 24 and that may be true, but IF they did, I think Kansas would make the cut.