The 2018-19 SEC basketball season will largely be determined by the plethora of talented seniors in the conference. These are the very best of the group.
The SEC is not known for being home to some of the country’s best upperclassmen – freshmen have ruled the conference in recent years, largely thanks to Kentucky – but that is changing this year.
Many of the conference’s top teams have talented seniors that either led their respective programs to historic seasons as juniors (looking at you, Auburn and Tennessee) or have the promise to do so in their final year of eligibility.
That’s not to say that the SEC isn’t welcoming a lot of top freshmen – six of the top 18 overall recruits and nine five-star prospects are entering the conference – but seniors are in a position to dictate the outcome of the conference race.
No senior has been the consensus conference player of the year since Scottie Wilbekin in 2014 (South Carolina‘s Sindarius Thornwell was the coaches’ player of the year in 2017 and Georgia‘s Yante Maten was the AP conference player of the year in 2018), but these next five players are trying to end that.
Here are the five seniors that are projected to be the SEC’s best in 2018-19.