The strongest conference in all of college basketball this season, according to KenPom’s preseason ratings, is the SEC.
The new-look conference features 16 teams, and it should shape out to be more competitive than ever before.
The top of the league features a national title contender (Alabama), a returning All-American (Johni Broome at Auburn) and one of the best defenses in the country (Tennessee).
But, as cliche as this sounds, even the teams projected near the bottom of the standings have the talent to upset the best of the best on any given night. This league is as deep as it as talented at the top.
Storylines of national interest are littered throughout. Will John Calipari’s new team be better than his old one? How will Texas and Oklahoma perform in their first foray into the SEC?
This should be the most competitive conference in college hoops, so without further ado, here's my 2024-25 SEC betting preview.
2024-25 SEC Regular Season Futures Odds
| Team Name | Odds (Via BetMGM) |
| Alabama | +200 |
| Auburn | +325 |
| Tennessee | +350 |
| Arkansas | +1300 |
| Texas A&M | +1500 |
| Texas | +1700 |
| Kentucky | +2000 |
| Florida | +2500 |
| Mississippi State | +3000 |
| Ole Miss | +3500 |
| Oklahoma | +8000 |
| Missouri | +8000 |
| South Carolina | +8000 |
| Georgia | +10000 |
| LSU | +10000 |
| Vanderbilt | +15000 |
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National Championship Contender
Alabama Crimson Tide
While there are plenty of great teams in the SEC this season, there's only one that qualifies as “elite” on paper.
Nate Oats, fresh off his first Final Four appearance, has somehow put together his best roster at Alabama.
Back is Mark Sears, a consensus preseason First Team All-American and the unquestionable best point guard in the country. Familiar faces like Latrell Wrightsell Jr. and Grant Nelson will join him as featured players, along with Jarin Stevenson and Mouhamed Dioubate off the bench.
But it's the newcomers that should catch everyone’s eye.
Oats emerged as the victor in the Clifford Omoruyi sweepstakes, and in the process, secured the best defensive center in the country. Omoruyi's rim running abilities should thrive in the Alabama system, and he'll be an enormous upgrade down low.
Chris Youngblood and Houston Mallette provide added backcourt depth and two 41% shooters from 3.
Aden Holloway left rival Auburn after a disappointing freshman season and will look to revive his career in a more free-flowing offense. Holloway is the biggest wildcard, but his ceiling is as high as any player on this roster.
The most pleasant surprise for Alabama in offseason practices has been Labaron Philon, a Kansas decommit and a true freshman point guard. Philon is the rumored starter alongside Sears, and it won’t be a surprise if he wins SEC Freshman of the Year.
Derrion Reid (five-star wing), Aidan Sherrell (four-star center) and Naas Cunningham (four-star wing) round out a freshman class that features four top-50 newcomers.
The talent level on this team is supreme. The Tide have the best backcourt in college basketball, and if the old adage “guards win in March” holds true, this team could cut down the nets in San Antonio.
SEC Contenders — If Things Break Their Way
Auburn Tigers
Bruce Pearl shuffled things around at the guard spots, so we'll see if the offseason musical chairs pay off.
Out are Holloway (Alabama), Tre Donaldson (Michigan) and K.D. Johnson (George Mason), and in are JP Pegues (Furman) and Miles Kelly (Georgia Tech).
For starters, one less cook in the kitchen may be a good thing for this rotation. Auburn didn’t play anyone more than 24 minutes per game last season, and the guard positions were particularly volatile, as it became clear that none of them could earn Pearl’s trust.
Pegues and Kelly will both presumably play huge roles for this team, allowing Denver Jones to thrive in a complimentary role alongside them.
The “how many minutes?” conversation doesn’t just apply to the backcourt, though. It applies to Pearl’s best player Johni Broome, as well.
Broome was sensational last year, averaging 16.5 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game in just 24 minutes per contest. If Broome simply plays 32 minutes an evening, he's likely the frontrunner for National Player of the Year.
But that's a big if under Pearl.
As always, this Auburn team is full of plus athletes that can fly around and cause havoc defensively. Chad Baker-Mazara and Chaney Johnson are both returning on the wing, as is Dylan Cardwell (backup big).
There's no shortage of depth on this roster, and despite the revolving door at the guard spots, this team will feel like it returns more than most in the SEC.
Keep an eye on freshman Tahaad Pettiford, too. The 5-foot-11 guard will have his chance to play right away and is a nice luxurious fourth option if any of the primary guards don’t work out.
Tennessee Volunteers
Stop me if you've heard this before — Tennessee will be elite defensively.
This program has finished top-five nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency for five consecutive seasons, and that shouldn't change this year.
Point guard Zakai Zeigler is back to frustrate SEC opponents for the fourth consecutive year. Zeigler is the returning SEC Defensive Player of the Year, and for good reason.
Alongside him returns Jahmai Mashack, who's arguably every bit as good defensively as Zeigler. Mashack’s lack of a jump shot has kept him out of a big-minute role in the past, but his shot has improved and that should allow Mashack to play true starter minutes — unlike last year.
Mashack and Zeigler together may be the best defensive duo in college hoops, but that’s not all the Volunteers have on that end.
Ohio State transfer Felix Okpara will man the center spot, and he's one of the best shot blockers in the sport.
That gives Tennessee an elite guard defender, an elite wing defender and an elite big defender. Good luck scoring against that.
I could copy and paste the first three words of that last sentence to preview the Tennessee offense, though. Good luck scoring.
The Dalton Knecht Show has headed to Hollywood, and out goes the highest ranked adjusted offensive efficiency that Rick Barnes has produced in four years. Knecht was often a one-man show, and the formula worked: surround a superstar volume shooter with four elite defenders.
Barnes would love to 3D-print that formula and run it back with a Diet Knecht, the only problem being that Chaz Lanier is not Dalton Knecht.
Lanier was arguably the most efficient scorer in the entire country last year at North Florida, but his numbers in his first three seasons showed no signs of that efficiency coming, and it's fair to question if last year was one fluky aberration.
Reports on Lanier in practice have been rosy (although he struggled massively in Tennessee’s exhibition loss to Indiana), so there's reason for optimism.
Igor Milicic Jr. (Charlotte transfer) has also received rave reviews. Darlinstone Dubar (Hofstra) is another option that could emerge.
Until someone does, Tennessee will be good, not great. If someone does, it jumps up to the Alabama tier atop the SEC.
Arkansas Razorbacks
Sometimes I wake up abruptly in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after having a nightmare that Kentucky fans turned on their Hall of Fame coach because his lottery picks no-showed in a game against Jack Gohlke in the NCAA Tournament. Scary stuff.
Oh wait, that actually happened? Arkansas fans must feel like they’re dreaming. It’s not every offseason that you stumble into one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport. He brings three starters with him, two top transfers and three top-25 recruits.
All the same questions that plagued Calipari at Kentucky apply here, namely, can you please for the love of all that is holy, win a game in March?
But March is a fickle beast, and the answer to that question is likely “yes."
Cal has no shortage of options in his first year in Fayetteville. The aforementioned Kentucky trio that followed him to Arkansas consists of DJ Wagner, Adou Thiero and Zvonimir Ivisic. All three started the exhibition game against Kansas, and all three looked fantastic.
The biggest surprise was Wagner, who caught a lot of flack for checks notes being worse than Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham last season. If that’s a crime, we need to file lawsuits against 99% of the guards in this sport.
Wagner looks primed to take a massive leap and live up to the potential of his high school career.
Whether or not Wagner’s breakout comes to fruition, Calipari’s backcourt will be loaded.
Boogie Fland, a true freshman, is the next Calipari guard that fans will fall in love with. Fland plays with an infectious swagger and has the playmaking and shotmaking chops that will likely find him in the NBA draft lottery next summer.
The third name mentioned in the backcourt is arguably the best guard that hit the transfer portal this summer, former Florida Atlantic star Johnell Davis.
Davis came off the bench in Arkansas’ exhibition, but he's nursing an injury in the preseason. If he's truly the sixth man here, he's the best bench player in college basketball.
Jonas Aidoo anchored Tennessee’s defense last season and pairs nicely as the defensive frontcourt option to Ivisic’s offensive-minded game. Aidoo has also been held out lately, and getting him back healthy will be a huge priority early on.
Freshmen Karter Knox and Billy Richmond provide scoring depth on the wings for a team that can go nine-deep.
A revenge-seeking Calipari should excite college basketball fans, and in the words of Bill Self: “This team is better than some of Calipari’s Kentucky ones."
Don’t be surprised at all if Arkansas is in the race for the SEC crown late into the season.
Should Be NCAA Tournament Teams
Texas A&M Aggies
The Aggies were a preseason darling last season after they went an amazing 15-3 in the SEC in 2023 and returned many key pieces.
Instead, they went .500 in conference play and limped into the NCAA Tournament as a nine-seed. The big question here is: How much upside is there with this roster build, which feels mightily similar to the past three A&M teams that have finished 33, 33 and 35 on KenPom in successive seasons?
Four of five starters from last year are back, and three of them have played three or more years at A&M under Buzz Williams already. This year’s Aggies are old, and they have more continuity as a group than pretty much any team in the league.
As always, A&M will go as Wade Taylor IV goes. At his best, Taylor is the best offensive guard in the country. At his worst, he shoots this team to losses. The reality is, he'll have games where he does both.
Last season the sum was a 36% volume shooter on a good — not great — team. That’s likely to be the outcome once again, but it's more than enough to make the NCAA Tournament.
The Aggies did add some nice pieces via the portal. Zhuric Phelps (SMU) is a nice Tyrece Radford replacement, and Pharrel Payne (Minnesota) was an add that went far too under the radar.
Payne will be the best center on the roster, and he alone could raise the level of play for this group into the top 25 in the country.
Expect another season right in line with the last three, but with slightly more upside.
Texas Longhorns
Texas has the highest ceiling and lowest floor of any team in this tier, and it's truly hard to know what to do with it.
The talent level of this roster is enormous, but the fit is messy, and trusting Rodney Terry to figure it all out is always a dangerous proposition.
Leading scorers Max Abmas and Dylan Disu are out of eligibility, and Terry opted to say goodbye to Tyrese Hunter and Dillon Mitchell in favor of new faces. It's a hard reset for a Texas program that needed one, but the guys it brought in are interesting, to say the least.
Individually, Jordan Pope, Tramon Mark and Arthur Kaluma are all talented players. As a group, they'll likely either thrive and overwhelm teams with said talent, or they could implode.
Pope is a score-first volume shooter that had to do everything for a horrible Oregon State team last season.
Mark is a score-first volume shooter that had to do everything for a horrible Arkansas team last season.
And Kaluma is a score-first … do you see what I’m saying yet?
There's only one basketball and we haven’t even mentioned consensus five-star guard Tre Johnson, who may actually be the best of the bunch.
From a roster construction standpoint, this team would've benefited enormously by trading out one of these scorers for a facilitator at point guard, or more players that are comfortable (and happy) without the ball in their hands.
Luckily, the Horns do have a few of those in Julian Larry and Jayson Kent, two fifth-year snipers from Indiana State. Larry and Kent could force their way onto the floor just off archetype alone.
Kadin Shedrick will need to be the answer at the center spot, but after only playing 17 minutes a game last season, that's another question mark.
Terry has more than enough talent, but he has his hands full making it all work.
Ole Miss Rebels
Basketball is about putting the orange ball into the 10-foot hoop. Ole Miss can do that. Actually, everyone on Ole Miss can do that.
Chris Beard has assembled a roster featuring eight players that each scored 12.9 points per game — or more — last season.
Even in the transfer portal era, that's insane.
Back are three of their four leading scorers from last year, Matthew Murrell, Jaylen Murray and Jaemyn Brakefield.
Beard stole Dre Davis from Seton Hall and Sean Pedulla from Virginia Tech to bolster the backcourt. In the frontcourt, Malik Dia from Belmont and Mikeal Brown-Jones from UNC Greensboro should be upgrades from last year’s disastrous pairing for the Rebels.
There are questions with this team, but seven of its top eight players are seniors, and all of them are plus offensive players.
That held true as Ole Miss routed Illinois in a charity exhibition, scoring 51 points in the first half.
Expect an offense that can beat anyone.
Kentucky Wildcats
Speaking of offense, when you hire Mark Pope, you should expect great scoring results immediately. Pope has instantly implemented a team full of sharpshooters that can let it fly from anywhere.
Pope had a difficult job this offseason, and he brought in nine transfers shortly after accepting the Kentucky job. Eight of the nine are seniors or older, and five are playing their fifth year of college basketball.
The biggest prizes were Jaxson Robinson and Koby Brea. Robinson spurned the NBA draft to follow his coach to Lexington, and he'll be the featured scorer, barring a surprise. Brea chose Kentucky over three other blue bloods, and the best shooter in college basketball is a perfect fit for what Pope wants to do.
Andrew Carr has gotten a lot of “alpha” buzz this offseason, and he'll likely lead the frontcourt in minutes and scoring.
Otega Oweh, Lamont Butler and Amari Williams are all plus-defenders at their positions, and when you mix a Pope offense with these three as personnel, you likely get a balanced basketball team.
This will likely be the oldest and least talented version of Pope's Kentucky teams for the remainder of his career. An NCAA Tournament birth should be the expectation, but anything more would be new for Pope, and a pleasant surprise in year one.
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Florida Gators
The Walter Clayton Jr. show is back for another year, and a First Team All-American honor could be in the cards, if all goes well.
Todd Golden will feature Clayton once again, and his 17.6 points per game should be repeated, at worst.
Alongside him comes Alijah Martin, who made the drive from Boca to Gainesville, and will inject some life into this Gators unit. Martin is a power forward stuck in a point guard’s body, and he'll need to be more than a finisher if Florida wants to out-perform its preseason rankings.
The best question for this team will be playmaking, as nobody on the roster averaged more than 2.6 assists per game last year (Clayton).
Outside of him, nobody exceeded 1.8 assists per night. This will likely result in a lot of Clayton hero-ball opportunities — which is not the worst fall back option in the world — but he'll need some help.
Center Micah Handlogten suffered a brutal ankle injury and is expected to miss the season. Rueben Chinyelu from Washington State is the replacement, but he leaves a lot to be desired.
This team will go as far as Clayton takes it, and that should be to the NCAA Tournament, at minimum.
SEC Bubble Teams
South Carolina Gamecocks
Lamont Paris set the bar high last season, catching national attention by taking the 54th-ranked team on KenPom to a 26-8 season in the win/loss column.
In other words, that team was worse than its record.
Some return to normalcy is expected here, but it may not crash and burn, as many of the key pieces are back.
Sophomore star Collin Murray-Boyles is a projected first-round NBA draft pick, and he'll need to carry this team on both ends.
Jamarii Thomas will be asked to do it all in the backcourt, and he may be able to at least match what Meechie Johnson Jr. gave them before he returned to Ohio State.
All in all, there’s enough here to be in the middle of the pack. If Paris can work his coaching magic again, the Gamecocks will be on the right side of the bubble.
Mississippi State Bulldogs
Take the Texas formula (supreme talent with so many fit questions) and divide the talent in half, and you get Mississippi State this season.
Josh Hubbard is an electric 5-foot-11 shotmaking guard. To compliment him, Chris Jans added Kanye Clary, a 5-foot-11 shotmaking guard that left his team in the middle of the season amidst academic concerns.
To compliment them, Jans added Riley Kugel, an inefficient volume shooter that never cracked the rotation fully at Florida.
If you’re playing the “what could go wrong” game here, the answer is: a lot. But if it goes right instead, there is more than enough talent to emerge from the middle group of teams in the SEC.
SEC Bottom of the Barrel
Vanderbilt Commodores
The Jerry Stackhouse era has come to a close, and new coach Mark Byington was welcomed in with one returning player (JQ Roberts), who averaged 2.3 points per game last season.
Byington brought in 10 new transfers, and he did an admirable job building a roster that makes sense. The biggest issue is the lack of top-end talent, as only five of his new faces played at the high-major level last year and none played 30 or more minutes per game.
The straw that stirs the drink will be AJ Hoggard, the fifth-year senior last seen at Michigan State. Tom Izzo declined to bring Hoggard back, opting instead to hand the reins to Hoggard’s backup Jeremy Fears, who missed the entire second half of last season after a tragic gunshot wound.
It’s going to take some time for Vanderbilt to get things going.
Oklahoma Sooners
It may be a make-or-break season for Porter Moser at Oklahoma, which is a terrifying proposition, as the Sooners enter their first year in a loaded SEC.
Moser’s best team at Oklahoma was his first; it finished 30th on KenPom. Since then, the Sooners have finished 54th and 46th nationally.
All in all, Moser’s teams have gone 20-34 in conference play in the Big 12. That’s the likely trajectory here, too.
The Sooners return one double-digit scorer, forward Jalon Moore. Their highest-rated freshman add is Jeremiah Fears, a reclassifying four-star, score-first guard.
Expect the Sooners to finish near the bottom of the standings, barring big surprises.
Missouri Tigers
If there’s one team in this bottom tier with a higher ceiling, it's Missouri.
Dennis Gates is fresh off an implosion of a season, going completely winless in 18 SEC contests. He was only one year removed from a 25-10 season and a trip to the Round of 32.
Gates can coach, and seven players from last year’s team became outgoing transfers, which is a great development for this Tigers program.
Gates brought in a nice transfer class headlined by Tony Perkins (Iowa) and Mark Mitchell (Duke), two players that have started on winning teams in the past.
The Tigers also bring in two 7-foot freshmen bigs in Peyton Marshall (On3’s #78 ranked freshman) and Trent Burns (On3’s #83).
If one of those two emerges, this team has a clear path to over-achieving.
Georgia Bulldogs
Mike White has underachieved based on his team’s preseason KenPom ranking for seven consecutive seasons.
There isn’t much reason to believe that will change, given the personnel this year at Georgia.
There are a lot of moving parts (seven outgoing transfers, five incoming), but none are particularly headline-grabbing.
White has opted to run it back with Silas Demary Jr. and Blue Cain in the backcourt, two players who combined to average 48.6 minutes per game, even though neither reached double digits as scorers.
Tyrin Lawrence (Vanderbilt) is the best new add, but even he brings efficiency concerns.
It feels like a losing formula yet again for Georgia.
LSU Tigers
Last and possibly least we have Matt McMahon’s LSU Tigers.
McMahon scratched and clawed his way to a .500 record last season in the SEC and a 17-16 record overall, but all three double-digit scorers are gone, and the replacements are iffy at best.
McMahon welcomes back seven returnees, but none played more than 22 minutes a game and none are guys you would consider “quality starters."
Only three incoming transfers were added — Jordan Sears (Tennesee Martin), Cam Carter (Kansas State) and Dji Bailey (Richmond). Those three will presumably be asked to be primary options, and that's a terrifying proposition.
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