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The SEC has been arguably the best conference in college basketball over the last handful of seasons, but there are as many questions surrounding the teams this year that there have been in a while. Mainly, the question is "who is actually on each roster", but eligibility concerns aside, each team is going to have things that will need to be answered.
Alabama head coach Nate Oats is synonymous with the adoption of analytics in college basketball, with his offensive system that prioritizes shots from three and at the rim. On defense, the system wants to give up mid-range shots. This roster has some defensive personnel questions, but the system itself can be good enough to carry them.
Arkansas will be one of the youngest teams in the entire country. As college basketball has gotten older, head coach John Calipari has gone to his bread and butter of getting high level freshman commits. The Razorbacks have only one senior and two juniors on the roster, and they have nine players on the roster who have zero college experience.
In the first season under head coach Steven Pearl, Auburn barely missed the NCAA Tournament in large part because of their defensive inefficiencies. Pearl figured out the offense quickly, but he's going to have to learn from last year's defensive flaws to get this team dancing in March.
Florida will be either the favorite or second favorite to win the championship this season. They have talent and continuity everywhere, and it becomes hard to nitpick this roster. Shooting may be the only potential flaw that stands out. Florida's projected starting five will only feature two players who shot over 25 percent from 3 last season, although there's more projected shooting depth on the bench.
Georgia was one of the fastest teams in the country last season. On offense, they got in transition as much as possible and took the first good shot. Defensively, they pressed a lot, trying to speed the game up even more. This led to Georgia's best KenPom finish since 2015.
There'll be very few questions surrounding the offense this season for Kentucky. The defense will decide if this is a team with Final Four upside or just a solid college basketball team. With how good the offense can be, the defense doesn't need to be elite, but it can't be the cause of the Wildcats consistently losing games.
Although this question can be applied to a lot of teams, no one in the country has more questions surrounding eligibility than LSU. With only a couple weeks before the season starts, LSU doesn't have confirmation about who will be eligible when the ball tips in November. They currently have ten players listed on their website, although a few of their eligibilities could be flipped at any moment.
Head coach Chris Beard has assembled a roster that's going to rely on toughness and defense to win games. Their projected rotation doesn't feature many shooters, but there's plenty of upside for what the defense can do.
Mississippi State isn't going to be overly small, but there isn't a lot of proven production in the frount court. At 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-10 respectively, Thomas Bassong and ND Okafor look to headline the starting front court. That isn't a gigantic duo, especially as teams are playing more double and triple big lineups.
Mark Mitchell is one of the major names left trying to become eligible this season. As of this writing, he's eligible and on the roster. Mitchell would give the Tigers a big boost in the front court with his ability to do everything on offense.
The backcourt duo of Xzayvier Brown and Pop Isaacs will be one of the more underrated backcourts in the conference. Oklahoma has enough talent in the front court to keep them competitive, but the back court will have to be relied on to try and take Oklahoma to their ceiling level this season.
South Carolina has gone 6-30 in SEC play the last two seasons, and the Gamecocks are looking for anything this season. On paper, they don't have the most talented roster, so it'll be up to head coach Lamont Paris to try and get the most out of the players there.
Head coach Rick Barnes has taken Tennessee to the Elite Eight in each of the last three seasons. Now he'll have to try and do it again with almost an entirely new roster. Barnes has brought in transfers in the past who ended up being stars, and players like Juke Harris and Dai Dai Ames could be the next in line.
Texas has a talented starting lineup, headlined my returning center Matas Vokietaitis. The Longhorns also have multiple highly ranked freshman coming in this season. Texas doesn't need all of them to be stars in their first year, but they do need some of them to be playable to provide depth to this team.
Head coach Bucky McMillan brought over his energetic style of play to his first season coaching at Texas A&M, as they made the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Now with more talent to be projected on the roster, will the uptempo system be able to work with what this team has?
After a breakout season, point guard Tyler Tanner returns to Vanderbilt as one of the premiere players in the sport. Vanderbilt got some quality depth to their roster, but at the end of the day, the Commodores are going to go as far as Tyler Tanner is able to take them.
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