SEC Basketball Power Rankings following the ACC-SEC Challenge
Following their inaugural showdown with the ACC, it’s time to see how all 14 SEC basketball teams in stack up as we finish up the first month of the hoops season.
The first edition of the ACC/SEC Challenge produced some tremendous matchups, especially with the teams at the top. Kentucky and Miami played a thrilling first half before the Wildcats ran away with it. Inversely, North Carolina built a massive lead vs. Tennessee before the Vols fought back late. Then, of course, the Duke Blue Devils found out what a trip to Bud Walton Arena is really like.
With the dust settled from the two-day bonanza of ACC/SEC games, here’s how the SEC power poll shakes out:
1. Kentucky (6-1)
Lexington partied like it was 2010 on Tuesday night. Rupp Arena roared as Reed Sheppard soared, splashing threes and making huge defensive plays all night long as the Wildcats demolished No. 8 Miami in front of special guest and 2010 Wooden Winner John Wall.
The win over Miami may be a seminal moment for a Wildcat program trying to shed their early 2020s skin and its lack of success with a 2023 team that’s revolutionized the way John Calipari coaches. The basketball zips around like a pinball between five guys who can all shoot threes and pass the rock — heck, starting center Tre Mitchell is averaging four assists per game! As a result of that spacing and their impressive turnover rate, the lowest in the nation, Kentucky boasts one of the sport’s most efficient offenses. They’ve got their groove back, for now.
2. Auburn (5-1)
A month of sheer carnage in the SEC has some teams like Auburn rising much higher than their preseason rating simply because they aren’t losing. The Tigers were a respected top-half-of-the-SEC team coming into the year and are looking improved off of last year’s slightly disappointing finish. They lost to a terrific Baylor team in a close and high-scoring contest to open the year, but have now run off five straight wins.
As we’ll see with several other SEC schools, the Tigers already had success vs. the ACC before playing in The Challenge. They handled Virginia Tech by 17 at home this week and had also scored a 24-point neutral site win over Notre Dame a couple of weeks back as Johni Broome looks like an SEC Player of the Year Contender — perhaps even a frontrunner.
3. Texas A&M (6-2)
Texas A&M came on like a thunderstorm in the second half of the 2023 season, finishing second in the SEC while beating No. 1 Alabama late in the year to nearly steal first. After returning most of their starters, including All-SEC Preseason point guard Wade Taylor, expectations were high.
Texas A&M came on like a thunderstorm in the second half of the 2023 season, finishing second in the SEC while beating No. 1 Alabama late in the year to nearly steal first. After returning most of their starters, including All-SEC Preseason point guard Wade Taylor, expectations were high.
4. Tennessee (4-3)
Now we’re getting into the wreckage. Yes, there are a couple of undefeated and one-loss teams below and way below Tennessee. But goodness gracious, look at the Vols’ schedule to date. It includes Maui Invitational matchups vs. No. 5 Kansas and No. 1 Purdue sandwiched in between road trips to Wisconsin and North Carolina. Rick Barnes is doing his best to test both his team and his blood pressure here in November.
In those contests, Tennessee is just 1-3 with a win at Wisconsin where they looked great. Then, Purdue and Kansas fended off the Volunteers in competitive games while North Carolina built a 25-point lead before Tennessee cut the deficit all the way to seven before UNC put it away by just eight. Like A&M, don’t kid yourself, Tennessee is still very solid.
5. Ole Miss (6-0)
Ah, one of the big quagmires in the SEC picture right now. Chris Beard’s first edition of the Rebels is undefeated (as of this writing) at 6-0 after just putting together their best performance yet in a 20-point win over an NC State squad that was off to an okay start. Plus, they’re getting top transfer and elite defensive big man Moussa Cisse into the lineup after he was finally cleared.
If Ole Miss can get Georgetown import and versatile wing Brandon Murray cleared as well, this group could really be rolling as they enter SEC play. Looking deeper into their results and the Rebels are sort of scraping by some lesser foes, but yet, they’re undefeated with help on the way. The NCAA Tournament should be on the minds of Ole Miss fans after a promising start.
6. Mississippi State (6-1)
The Bulldogs were the toast of the conference prior to the ACC/SEC Challenge. Despite losing returning star player Tolu Smith to a long-term injury just before the season, MSU fired out of the cannon with a bang to start the year, beating Arizona State, Washington State and a ranked Northwestern team all away from home while freshman point guard Josh Hubbard emerged as a clear day one star.
Mississippi State came back towards earth this week, though, as they traveled to Atlanta and were soundly beaten by a bad Georgia Tech team, scoring just 59 points. Still, they’re off to another good start after making the tourney a year ago, and State should be favored in the rest of their non-conference games.
7. Arkansas (4-3)
Surely, Razorback fans won’t have an issue with their Hogs at seventh place in the SEC power rankings following a win over Duke. It sounds crazy to rate Arkansas so low after such an electric performance on Tuesday, but we’re here to look at the full picture, which includes some pretty head-scratching lows for Eric Musselman’s group.
Arkansas dropped a home game to a respectable UNC Greensboro, then lost to Memphis before getting run off the floor by North Carolina in the Battle 4 Atlantis. Luckily, they did overcome Stanford in overtime to open that tourney, recording at least one victory. Now, they’ve returned home to beat Duke — and that’s the rub with Musselman’s Arkansas teams. They’ll barbecue you at home, are dangerous in any matchup and especially in March, but can throw up real clunkers.
8. Alabama (5-2)
See, it’s hard to imagine that the 12th and 13th place teams from last year’s SEC have done a fly-by on the 2023 champs and No. 1 overall NCAA Tournament seed. That’s referring to South Carolina and Ole Miss rebounding with undefeated starts after such low finishes a year ago. But with the results we have so far, Alabama simply deserves to be knocked down a peg.
The Tide have opened the year as on fire as they were a year ago on offense. Threes, layups, running and gunning, it’s all working to grossly efficient results for Nate Oats. But the opposite is true defensively as Clemson, Ohio State and Oregon consecutively averaged north of 90 points vs. Bama. They beat the Ducks but lost the other two, and Oats was irate over the lack of toughness from his group after the Clemson loss at home. They’re likely better than eighth in the league but we’ll just have to see that to believe it.
9. South Carolina (6-0)
Along with Ole Miss, the Gamecocks are another undefeated conundrum. Like the Rebels, the undefeated record is admirable but a littler shakier once you break it down. They did have success vs. the ACC, besting a woefully under-talented Notre Dame club in The Challenge after they’d already outlasted Virginia Tech by two in a neutral site contest.
They won by just 10 vs. VMI, a team ranked in the low 300s by analytic models, and overcame DePaul and Grand Canyon by single digits. But that’s enough downplay. Instead, let’s acknowledge that Lamont Paris‘ second team is already significantly more promising than his first while a visit to in-state rival Clemson next week sets up a huge opportunity for Carolina to verify their early-season success.
10. Florida (4-3)
With a second-year head coach and a transfer haul revered as one of the very best in the country, optimism was high entering the 2023-24 season. Through just seven games, though, Florida has three losses in rather close games to Virginia, Baylor and Wake Forest while possessing a pair of ACC victories to hang their hat on vs. Pittsburgh and Florida State.
That’s a challenging run to begin the year, especially since the UVA and Baylor loss were neutral site contests and the trip to Wake was their first true road game. By no means has this start proved a lack of talent or a certain lower-half finish in the SEC. But with league play in a deep SEC on the way, Florida narrowly missed out on several chances to grab a quality out-of-conference win.
11. Missouri (6-2)
The first two weeks of the season were not kind to the Tigers. In the second game of the season, Mizzou fell at home by 15 against Memphis, then barely escaped a trip to lowly Minnesota after the not-so-Golden Gophers utterly fell apart, before returning home to lose to Jackson State, who was 0-5 entering the ball game.
Valleys don’t come much deeper than that sort of 3-2 start in year two of the Dennis Gates era. However, Missouri has rebounded to win three straight since the JSU debacle and came away with a win at Pittsburgh in the ACC/SEC Challenge, which is likely to be no worse than a quad two win come March. And with just two losses, only one really bad one, Gates has plenty of time to turn Missouri into a tourney-caliber team. Let’s just hope he finds at least one big body he can consistently rely on.
12. Georgia (4-3)
In year two under SEC veteran Mike White, Georgia scheduled aggressively and has certainly tested themselves in the month of November. They were competitive against a fully healthy Oregon team (who has since been decimated by injuries) out in Vegas to open the season, lost to Providence in another close game but went 2-1 against ACC foes so far.
As one of several SEC schools to face multiple ACC foes in November, the Dawgs represented themselves pretty well, hanging tough on a neutral court vs. Miami while toppling Florida State (in a frantic comeback) and Wake Forest. Assuming they avoid Mississippi State’s folly and take care of Georgia Tech in Athens, these Bulldogs could very well go undefeated until conference play.
13. LSU (4-3)
The climb out of the SEC’s basement is steep and challenging as the league is as loaded as it ever has been. For LSU, the road is even bumpier after finishing dead last in 2023 at 2-16. Plus, they’ve gotten no luck after their top transfer, 20-point-per-game Tulane point guard Jalen Cook, has yet to be cleared by the NCAA.
The result is a 4-3 start with close losses to Nicholls State and Dayton before an overtime win over Wake Forest as their marquee victory. Their second run-in with the ACC was less successful, as the Tigers made the trip up to bitter-cold Syracuse only to be blown out 80-57 in The Challenge. Quite honestly, LSU appears to be a strong candidate to repeat as last-place finishers, especially if Cook never gets on the floor.
14. Vanderbilt (3-4)
A spirited end to the 2023 season plus a dynamic pair of returners in the backcourt set Vanderbilt up for the most optimistic preseason of the Jerry Stackhouse era. Seriously, the Commodores were a sneaky bubble contender by last spring after beating Kentucky twice down the stretch as they won 10 of 12 leading up to Selection Sunday.
But the start of the 2023-24 season has been a complete disaster. In the opener, Vandy lost to a Presbyterian program that last won a game in December of 2022 and was riding an 18-game losing streak from the previous year. The Commodores did rebound to beat three other mid-majors but the win streak was short-lived once power conference competition arrived. As we head into December, Vanderbilt has now lost three straight to NC State, Arizona State and Boston College — listed in decreasing quality yet Vandy lost by increasingly larger margins to each.
There is a slight excuse, as the star players in the backcourt, Tyrin Lawrence and Ezra Manjon, as well as some other contributors, haven’t been fully healthy to start the year. But you know, several teams are banged up and even a hampered SEC club ought to take care of last-place finishers out of the Big South.