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SEC Media Day takeaways: Alabama’s title run, Kentucky’s new path, John Calipari’s optimism and more

Neil Blackmon

By Neil Blackmon

Published:

BIRMINGHAM — Men’s basketball took center stage during opening day of SEC Media Day ahead of the 2024-2025 season, which begins Nov. 4.

With 9 teams ranked in the preseason Top 25, including No. 2 Alabama, which the media selected as the preseason favorite to win the conference, there was no shortage of star power and storylines on Tuesday at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Mountain Brook.

Here are the 5 biggest takeaways from SEC Media Days.

The best (checks notes) basketball league in America

The SEC has come a long, long way since the late Mike Slive and Greg Sankey brought in a group of consultants to figure out how to make basketball matter in a league where presumably, it just means more.

The SEC ranked last among Power 6 conferences in KenPom’s conference rankings less than a decade ago in 2016. That’s when the SEC brought in outside consultants who came to the unsurprising conclusion that for the SEC to reign supreme on the hardwood the way it does on the football field, they needed to invest.

“Mike Slive and Greg Sankey understood that with the SEC Network and all the television programming, a quality basketball product was important. They did the hard work of preaching investment,” Georgia coach Mike White said Tuesday.

The investment came and slowly but surely, the winning followed.

The league is coming off a record 8 NCAA Tournament berths in 2024 and the conference’s first Final Four berth this decade with Alabama reaching its first Final Four a season ago.

While Texas and Oklahoma were added primarily for football prowess, they bring Big 12 credibility and basketball tradition to a conference already bursting with basketball momentum.

“We used to have promote our league in basketball. Billy (Donovan) and I used to have go tell people that our league was good and hope they believed us,” John Calipari, now the head coach at Arkansas, told SDS on Tuesday. “All the sudden, we are the ‘it’ league in basketball, too. You look at the investment. The facilities. The  passion of the fan bases. The great coaches. The home sites in this league. Ridiculous. Coaches and players all at the top of their game. It’s incredible.”

The SEC has never finished better than 2nd in the KenPom conference rankings, but with 9 preseason Top-25 teams and at least 11 bona fide NCAA Tournament berth contenders, it will almost certainly rank first come March this season.

There was a bounce in Sankey’s step on Tuesday, and it’s hard to blame him.

The SEC doesn’t have the storied tradition of Tobacco Road or set its seasons by basketball like the ACC. It hasn’t produced an NCAA Tournament champion since Kentucky won it all in 2012. Three ACC programs have won the tournament since then — not including Louisville, which won in 2013 before joining the ACC.

What the SEC does have in 2024-25 is the best basketball conference in America.

“It’s the best league in America, period,” Ole Miss coach Chris Beard said Tuesday.

Alabama will guard, which makes them the favorites to win the national championship

A season ago, Alabama rode one of the 4 best SEC offenses in the KenPom era to the program’s first Final Four. That’s the good news. The bad news is that 3 of the other offenses (Florida 2006, Florida 2007, Kentucky 2012) cut down the nets as national champions because they also happened to play a little defense. The other team on the list — Kentucky in 2015 — won 38 times and lost just once, in the Final Four to Wisconsin.

Alabama fell short in their quest to capture the program’s first national championship because they ranked a woeful 111th nationally in defensive efficiency and outside the top 200 nationally in 2-point defense and defensive rebounding.

To remedy that, Nate Oats made 2 critical decisions.

First, he hit the transfer portal, bringing Cliff Omoruyi, who gives the Crimson Tide an elite rim protector who will also make life easier on Alabama’s guards and forward Grant Nelson, who won’t have to play so close to the rim where he’s frequently bodied and can’t effectively use his length.

The second decision was a staff addition, as Alabama brought in Brian Adams to coordinate the defense. Adams spent over a decade in the NBA, most recently with the Pistons. In that time, Adams led 6 top-5 NBA defensive outfits, including one that won an NBA title (Boston, in 2008).

Oats said Tuesday that the decision to hire Adams was intentional.

“We interviewed a handful of guys,” Oats said. “We were very meticulous with the hire. We weren’t even close to being a good defense last year and that falls on me as a coach. Everyone we interviewed, I told them, if you can’t coach a top-5 defense, don’t bother applying or talking to us. We narrowed it down as a staff and became obvious Brian was the right choice. Our defense is going to be markedly improved this season.”

That’s trouble for the rest of college basketball, because the Crimson Tide, led by unanimous preseason All-American Mark Sears, should once again score at a staggering level behind an avalanche of shooters including Latrell Wrightsell, Chris Youngblood and Houston Mallette. If uber-talented freshman Labaron Philon and Auburn transfer Aden Holloway contribute as Oats expects, the Crimson Tide will boast the nation’s most explosive and deep backcourt.

The combination of a defense that gets stops and the Oats offense makes Alabama the favorite to win the national championship.

John Calipari wants to talk about Arkansas

John Calipari is done talking about his departure from Kentucky, or so he would have you believe.

“I’ve said all I have to say about that,” the coaching legend said shortly after taking the stage Tuesday. “You can look it up.”

Of course, he then listed all the draft picks and lottery picks he produced at Kentucky, but college basketball needs Cal to be Cal.

As for his first Arkansas team, he likes what he has, especially in the backcourt.

“We have a chance to be great in the backcourt with DJ (Wagner), Nelly (Johnell Davis) and Boogie Fland,” Calipari said. “We have 3 really good guards with swagger.”

The key will be Wagner, who came with Calipari from Kentucky. Calipari was quick to point out that the former top-5 recruit was SEC Freshman of the Week 3 of the first 4 weeks of the season before injuring his ankle last season. While Wagner played through the injury, he was not the same player in SEC play.

“It limited what he could do,” Calipari said. “You hurt your ankle and you can’t jump. You aren’t as explosive off the dribble. It’s harder to shoot. So it’s good to see him with his swagger back. He’s a great kid. He cares so much. Maybe too much. Sometimes I wish he were less afraid to fail. But he’s going to have a great year.”

If he does, Calipari’s first Razorbacks team could do something his final 4 Kentucky teams couldn’t — play on the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

A wide open race for 2nd through 12th

If Alabama is in Tier 1 of the SEC by itself, then Tiers 2 and 3 are crowded.

There are as many as 12 SEC programs that could compete for the NCAA Tournament bids, from defending SEC regular-season champion Tennessee to 2024 SEC Tournament champion Auburn down all the way to an Oklahoma team that was the first team left out of the NCAA field last March.

But who will separate themselves?

The most likely Tier 2 group includes Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky, Arkansas and Ole Miss.

Auburn has a legitimate Wooden Award candidate in Johni Broome, who was one of the only SEC players to siphon votes away from Mark Sears for preseason SEC Player of the Year honors. The Tigers also feel like they’ll be better in the backcourt with JP Pegues running the point and a pair of 3-and-D menaces in Denver Jones and Chad Baker-Mazara defending the wings.

Kentucky is the most intriguing team of the group.

Mark Pope wins every press conference, and Tuesday was no different.

Showing up and fielding questions in a Kentucky letterman jacket, Pope raved about the experience and hunger of his first team in Lexington.

“I have a group of players that are incredibly curious,” Pope said. “They’re veteran guys and they’ve won a ton of games, but they’ve all done it different ways. So now I have a locker room that’s incredibly curious. That comes from humility. And when you are humble and you are curious, you have chance to grow really, really fast.”

It helps to have a lockdown winner of a guard in Lamont Butler and a savvy passer who understands Pope’s endless cutting, ball movement offense as well as Jaxson Robinson. Throw in a dynamic shooter like Koby Brea and a stretch mismatch in Andrew Carr and you start to see why the sum of this Kentucky team might be greater than its parts appear. What a fun concept for the sport’s best fan base, which too often has suffered seasons where the opposite is true.

Tennessee is coached by Rick Barnes, one of the best regular-season coaches in the history of the sport. Barnes, who has won college basketball games for over 4 decades, believes he might have the best defensive backcourt he’s ever coached in Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack, whom Barnes called “the most undervalued, underappreciated elite defender I’ve ever been around.” Chaz Lanier, a walking bucket who transferred in from North Florida, doesn’t need to be Dalton Knecht.

“No one can be DK, right?” Zeigler said Tuesday. “But Chaz isn’t approaching this like that. No one in our building needs him to score like Dalton. We have him and Darlinstone Dubar and myself and we’ll be more balanced. Sometimes that’s harder to guard.”

From Zeigler’s lips to Rocky Top’s ears. Or something like that.

Florida could finish as high as second in the league if the rebuilt frontcourt, led by Washington State transfer Reuben Chinyelu, a human Adonis and mountain of a rim protector and second-year All-SEC selection Alex Condon take the leaps their talent suggests is possible. If Florida’s frontcourt struggles, a finish of 7th or even 8th is more likely, but it’s hard to see a team with All-SEC guard and All-American candidate Walter Clayton Jr. and bulldog guard Alijah Martin, in from Florida Atlantic’s Final Four group, dropping any farther.

Ole Miss should make a big jump in Year 2 under one of the game’s best coaches in Chris Beard. The Rebels finished 141st in defensive efficiency last season. Beard believes they’ll be a more willing and physical group in Year 2, led by a group of tough-nosed positionless players like Malik Dia, a rim protector with a high IQ, do-everything guard Matthew Murrell, chiseled wing Jaemyn Brakefield, who at 6-9, 230 can guard 5 spots, and the switchable Dre Davis, who is an underrated defender who plays with great energy.

One of those teams should finish 2nd.

But at least 6 others, including Wade Taylor IV and Texas A&M, the uber-talented Texas, Chris Jans’ tough Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Mike White’s best Georgia roster yet, and Lamont Paris’ South Carolina team could make the NCAA Tournament. And yes, LSU and Missouri have better rosters than a season ago, too. No, there’s no Diego Pavia to bail out Vanderbilt.

Preseason Awards, of course!

The SDS All-SEC Ballot looked like this:

  • Mark Sears, Alabama
  • Johnell Davis, Arkansas
  • Johni Broome, Auburn
  • Walter Clayton Jr., Florida
  • Zakai Zeigler, Tennessee

The SDS All-Defensive Team looks like this:

  • Cliff Omoruyi, Alabama
  • Johni Broome, Auburn
  • Alijah Martin, Florida
  • Lamont Butler, Kentucky
  • Zakai Zeigler, Tennessee

SDS voted for Mark Sears as SEC Player of the Year. 

Neil Blackmon

Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.

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