Alabama is the Southeastern Conference favorite in basketball, not football. John Calipari is leading a team with high expectations, just not at Kentucky.
And Texas and Oklahoma are along for the ride now, too. The SEC has matched its record with eight NCAA Tournament teams each of the past two years and has valid reasons to expect even more with the league now at 16 members.
It just has a different look.
No. 2 Alabama leads nine SEC teams in the preseason AP Top 25 after making the program's first Final Four. Like most years lately, SEC coaches are confidently touting their league as tops in college basketball, not just football.
“We’re the best league in college basketball. We just are,” said Georgia coach Mike White, who thinks double-digit NCAA bids is possible. "The SEC is officially now the best league in college basketball.”
The ranked SEC teams include: Alabama, No. 11 Auburn, No. 12 Tennessee, No. 13 Texas A&M, No. 16 Arkansas, No. 19 Texas, No. 21 Florida, No. 23 Kentucky and No. 24 Mississippi.
Alabama coach Nate Oats is embracing the high expectations after being picked fifth in the SEC the past two seasons, days after the school raised the Final Four banner at Coleman Coliseum.
“Our roster is not such that anybody is picking us fifth, so people have asked me whether we would rather come in under the radar and surprise people or ... be picked to win,” Oats said. “I’d say I’d much rather have the roster I currently have and deal with where we’re picked.
"We’ll have to create some other type of motivational factors because we won’t have a chip on our shoulder from getting picked fifth or whatever.”
It's a rare instance when Alabama is ranked higher in basketball than football (No. 7). But guard Mark Sears points to a former Tide football coach's philosophy on outside distractions as rat poison.
“Like Nick Saban said, you can’t let the rat poison affect you," said Sears, the preseason SEC player of the year. “If you let it affect you now, it makes you feel like you’ve arrived and really we haven’t done anything yet.”
The SEC landscape has changed in the offseason, beyond even the addition of Texas and Oklahoma.
Calipari headed to Arkansas after 15 seasons at traditional league hoops headliner Kentucky, and some top players went with him.
“He’s one of the great coaches of all time, and he will make it even tougher than it’s ever been to play at Arkansas,” said defending champion Tennessee’s coach Rick Barnes, a longtime friend of Calipari. “I’m happy for him because I think he’s happy.”
Calipari inherits a program where Eric Musselman made two Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight during his five-season run before heading to USC. He brought over a number of his Kentucky players and recruits, Florida Atlantic transfer Johnell Davis and five-star recruits — according to the 247Sports composite rankings — Billy Richmond III, Karter Knox and Boogie Fland.
Calipari's first question was about when he felt it was time to leave Kentucky.
“I’ve talked about why I did what I did. I’ve talked at length about it,” he said. “What I want to do today is talk about the SEC. This league has gotten ridiculously hard. I want to talk about my team, my roster.”
Former BYU coach and Kentucky player Mark Pope took his place at the school where he was a captain on the 1996 national championship team. Pope had to rebuild the roster from scratch, bringing in nine transfers and three freshmen with no returning scholarship players.
At least he doesn't have to face players saying this is how Calipari did it.
“I don’t have a lot of guys that are trying desperately to hold on to a way they did it somewhere else or how they’ve done it before,” Pope said.
Calipari feels like Pope's close ties to the school and understanding of the expectations weigh in his favor.
“I think they hired a perfect guy for that job,” Calipari said, noting he'd still be pulling for Kentucky, except against his new team.
But the perennial favorite Wildcats are picked to finish eighth. It's the lowest media day forecast for Kentucky since the elimination of SEC divisions for basketball starting with the 2012-13 season.
“How much better is the league with John Calipari at Arkansas and now Coach Pope at Kentucky?” Auburn coach Bruce Peal said.
