SEC Basketball has some great talent coming in for 2018-19. Here’s an in-depth look at the 10 players that will shake up the league during the season.
SEC basketball is slowly becoming a powerhouse in the college world. It used to be Kentucky vs. the pack, but it has now become an entertaining battle between many teams. Teams lower in the standings are improving through coaching hires and recruiting, and teams in the middle have made steps in the right direction to be in contention to be the best team in the conference.
Almost every team in the SEC is trending upward in terms of success. In two to three years, the SEC might be as good as the ACC in terms of how many quality teams there are. It’s already surpassed the Big 12 in my opinion. It might never be as top-heavy as the ACC with Duke and UNC, but it definitely will have just as many teams in the NCAA tournament. It was only one team away last year, but it was an SEC record for most teams to make the tournament with eight. With teams like Georgia on the rise, they might get there in the next few years.
The SEC has seen this amazing turnaround for two main reasons. The first is coaching. Whether it’s Avery Johnson, Bruce Pearl, or Tom Crean, former lackluster teams are now on the rise thanks to their coaching decisions. Add those to the staples in the conference like Calipari and Frank Martin, and you have a stout group of coaches that is second to only the ACC.
The other main reason the conference is doing so well is recruiting. Calipari has long embraced the one-and-done strategy, and other coaches are slowly following suit. Missouri got Michael Porter Jr. Alabama got Collin Sexton. It’s just what you have to do in this day and age in order to compete at a high level. Due to the increased competition in recruiting, the SEC has taken ten of the best 31 recruits. In this article, I rank those ten.
All these rankings are from 247Sports. It will also include my analysis with how they’ll fit into the scheme and squad at hand. With that being said, let’s get started.