UK’s Pope says SEC should be ‘feared’ nationally

• Myron Medcalf, ESPN Personnel WriterOct 15, 2024, 04:31 PM ET

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  • Signed up with ESPN.com in 2011
  • Graduate of Minnesota State University, Mankato

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.– Last season, Mark Pope stated he believed the Huge 12 was the toughest conference in America as he led BYU during its very first year in the league.As Kentucky’s brand-new guys’s basketball coach this season, nevertheless, he said he’s persuaded the SEC boasts the most intimidating lineup in the country, despite the Big 12 having five of the top 10 teams in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll.Editor’s Picks 2 Related Pope stated

the SEC, which has nine teams in the survey, must be feared.”Right now, it is an onslaught

that is to be appreciated and probably feared a bit,” Pope stated Tuesday throughout SEC media day.”And all of that is precisely what we desire. It’s truly setting the requirement for college basketball right now.” The disruption created by the transfer

portal and conference realignment has actually mainly helped the SEC and the Big 12, ranked very first and second respectively in KenPom’s preseason conference rankings.The teams in the new 18-team SEC, which now includes Oklahoma and Texas, will attempt to win the national championship for simply the 2nd time given that Florida completed its back-to-back title runs in 2006 and’07. Only Kentucky in 2012 has won a national championship for the SEC since.The league’s coaches, nevertheless, say they believe this season’s variation of the SEC tops the rest of the conferences in the

country.Associated Press Preseason Top 25 Team Pts.1. Kansas( 30)1,449 2. Alabama (14)1,428 3. UConn (11 )1,345 4. Houston (4)1,343 5. Iowa State 1,177 6.

Gonzaga(1) 1,157 7. Duke 1,154 8. Baylor 1,109 9. North Carolina 1,037 10

. Arizona 905 11. Auburn 901 12. Tennessee 775 13. Texas A&M 737 14. Purdue 678 15. Creighton 631 16. Arkansas 625 17. Indiana 492 18. Marquette 484 19. Texas 332 20. Cincinnati 271 21. Florida 249 22. UCLA 210 23. Kentucky 191 24. Ole Miss 132 25. Rutgers 102 Alabama returns its leading players from last season’s Final Four run, the very first in school history. And no other conference can claim that half of its members have an area in the AP survey. Plus, SEC stars Mark Sears, Johni Broome and Wade Taylor IV all have earned numerous preseason honors so far and will go into the season as genuine prospects for the Wood Award.”We’re the best league in college basketball,”Georgia coach Mike White said .”It just is. “Auburn’s Bruce Pearl has remained in the league considering that 2005, when he took over at Tennessee. He stated the depth of the league now, with Texas and Oklahoma on board, is the strongest he has actually seen. As an outcome, he said the SEC might

call for as numerous as a lots NCAA competition groups. The record variety of quotes for a single conference in the very same NCAA tournament is 11 by the Big East in the 2010-11 season.”I’ve never seen it, top to bottom, as excellent as it is right now,”Pearl stated.” There are three or 4 teams definitely good enough to be at the Last Four. There are seven or eight groups good enough

to win this league. And there are 10 to 12 groups that can enter the NCAA competition. I

‘ve never ever seen it this good. “For Pope, it’s familiarity. He led BYU into the Big 12 a year ago as that league started an expansion that eventually added eight groups to the mix in two seasons. This season, he shows up amid the SEC’s growth.”We strolled into the Huge 12 in 2015 for the first time, the most difficult league in the nation,”Pope said.”And as things go, we get to walk into the toughest league in the country now in the SEC.

It’s quite exceptional.”