With two new schools boosting the league’s high profile, SEC basketball just means more this year.
The additions of Texas and Oklahoma were made with football in mind. However, combined with the rising momentum on the basketball side of the conference’s operation, those new schools have turned the SEC into a full-on juggernaut.
Alabama returns the core group that led the Tide to the program’s first-ever Final Four, while Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, Ole Miss and Texas A&M return key All-SEC performers. John Calipari made the hop from Kentucky to Arkansas this offseason, boosting the Razorbacks’ profile. In the meantime, former Wildcat Mark Pope has re-tooled Kentucky after coming in from BYU.
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As many as 11 squads in this 16-team league have realistic NCAA Tournament aspirations, and a handful will feel like this is their year to cut down the nets at the Final Four in San Antonio. How could things shake out this season? Here’s a complete overview of the conference.
Projected Order of Finish
1. Alabama Crimson Tide
Expectations for Alabama basketball are as high as they’ve ever been. Head coach Nate Oats returns the core of last season’s team that made the first Final Four in program history, headlined by National Player of the Year candidate Mark Sears (21.5 ppg, 4.0 apg, 43.6 3P%, 95 3PM) and versatile, athletic forward Grant Nelson (11.9 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.6 bpg).
The Tide will be one of the nation’s best shooting teams again in 2024-25, and they should be markedly better on the defensive end. Rutgers transfer Cliff Omoruyi (10.4 ppg, 8.3 rpg, 2.9 bpg) is an elite rim protector and interior defender and should have a gigantic impact in those areas. That’s big, considering Alabama ranked outside the top 200 nationally in defending the paint and defensive rebounding.
Those three pieces would be enough to put this group in the SEC title race no matter what, yet there may be other reasons Alabama ends up the preseason No. 1 team in the country. Transfers Chris Youngblood (15.3 ppg at South Florida) and Houston Mallette (14.7 ppg at Pepperdine) add depth and shooting to a rotation that also returns key cogs in Latrell Wrightsell Jr. (8.9 ppg), Jarin Stevenson (5.4 ppg) and Mouhamed Dioubate (2.9 ppg). The Tide also secured the services of reigning SEC All-Freshman guard Aden Holloway (7.3 ppg, 2.7 apg) from their rivals at Auburn. If highly rated freshmen Derrion Reid, Aiden Sherrell and Labaraon Philon produce as expected, this may be the deepest team in the nation.
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