The official SEC basketball preseason picks are out. Kentucky projected to finish fourth.
On the eve of the Southeastern Conference’s annual men’s basketball media day in Birmingham, the league office released the predicted order of finish for the 2023-24 season.
Kentucky was not at the top of that list.
The Tennessee Volunteers are the team to beat in the SEC, according to media members who voted in the poll, which was released by the league office Tuesday afternoon. The Vols return a talented bunch from a team that went 25-11 and earned a 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament last season, which ended with a loss to Florida Atlantic in the Sweet 16.
Santiago Vescovi and Zakai Zeigler are the headliners for the UT roster, which will also feature returnees Josiah-Jordan James, Jonas Aidoo, Jahmai Mashack, plus Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht, who averaged 20.2 points per game last season. All six of those players are upperclassmen.
Tennessee is also the highest-ranked SEC team in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll at No. 9 and the initial KenPom ratings at No. 8 overall. The Vols shared the league title with Auburn at the end of the 2017-18 season but haven’t won the SEC title outright since 2007-08, when Bruce Pearl was the head coach.
Last season’s runner-up, Texas A&M, was picked to finish second in the league, with Arkansas coming in at third in the voting.
And Kentucky was next on the list, picked to finish fourth in the conference.
The Wildcats were picked by SEC media members as the No. 1 team in the league in each of the past two preseasons. UK finished third (behind Alabama and Texas A&M) last season, and the Cats ended up in a tie for second place (behind Auburn) during the 2021-22 season.
Kentucky has not won the SEC crown since the 2019-20 season.
UK will be heavily reliant on freshmen this time around, a roster bolstered by the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class and featuring four McDonald’s All-Americans — Aaron Bradshaw, Justin Edwards, Reed Sheppard and D.J. Wagner — plus five-star prospect Rob Dillingham.
Leading backcourt scorer Antonio Reeves returns for another season at UK, which also added West Virginia transfer Tre Mitchell. Those are the only two scholarship upperclassmen on the Cats’ roster.
After Kentucky came Alabama in fifth place, Auburn in sixth, Mississippi State in seventh and Florida in eighth. Missouri (ninth), Ole Miss (10th), Vanderbilt (11th), Georgia (12th), LSU (13th) and South Carolina (14th) rounded out the predicted order of finish.
Of course, preseason rankings — especially those meant to predict games that won’t start until early January — might not mean much this time of year.
Alabama and Texas A&M were picked fifth and sixth, respectively, in last year’s preseason poll. Bama won the SEC and earned the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, while A&M went 15-3 in conference play and finished just one game behind the Crimson Tide in the final league standings.
The college basketball season begins Nov. 6, with Kentucky tipping things off against New Mexico State in Rupp Arena. The opening day of SEC league play will be Jan. 6, when UK plays at Florida to begin its 2023-24 conference schedule.
All-SEC team
Along with the predicted order of finish, select SEC media members were asked to submit five choices for the preseason all-conference team.
Unsurprisingly, Texas A&M junior guard Wade Taylor IV was the top vote-getter, making him the preseason SEC player of the year. Taylor averaged 16.3 points and 3.9 assists per game last season for the Aggies and is the league’s top returning scorer. Only Alabama’s Brandon Miller and LSU’s KJ Williams scored more points for SEC teams last season.
Kentucky freshman Justin Edwards was also named to the All-SEC first team, which consisted of seven players. Edwards is projected by some national outlets as the No. 1 overall pick in next year’s NBA Draft and is expected to play a major role immediately for the Wildcats this season. The rest of the All-SEC first team included Grant Nelson (Alabama), Trevon Brazile (Arkansas), Johni Broome (Auburn), Tolu Smith (Mississippi State) and Santiago Vescovi (Tennessee).
UK senior Antonio Reeves was one of five players named to the All-SEC second team. Reeves was the Wildcats’ leading backcourt scorer last season and was the only scholarship upperclassman to return for the 2023-24 campaign. Rounding out the All-SEC second-team selections were Mark Sears (Alabama), Davonte Davis (Arkansas), Riley Kugel (Florida) and Zakai Zeigler (Tennessee).
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