SEC Players of the Week announced after first week of conference play

The New Year has arrived and as has conference play in college basketball. Gone are the endless and droll days of buy games, non-conference blowouts and bizarre neutral site events. Now, every team in the country will be put to the test in true road environments against familiar power-five foes. It’s time for the real college basketball season to start.

This past week the SEC began league play with a bang, as several ranked teams fell on the road this week against some up-and-comers with new coaches. However, amid the rubble of a chaotic Week 1 to start the conference slate, let’s look at who the SEC deemed the best performers of the last week.

Per the official conference website, the two recipients of SEC Player of the Week honors are: LSU senior guard Trae Hannibal; and Alabama freshman star Brandon Miller.

Miller is no surprise. The true freshman phenom is one of the very best players in all of college basketball — and arguably the most talented one. It is not ridiculous at all to think he could win the Wooden Award, or even just SEC Player of the Year. He’s well on his way, having notched an SEC POW nomination after just one week of conference play.

Miller earned the honor, though. Alabama had perhaps the most impressive win of the week within the league, going on the road and beating a ranked Mississippi State club by double-digits. Credit Brandon Miller for leading the win with his 19 points and 11 rebounds en route to the third double-double of the rookie wing’s season.

The other standout SEC hooper, Trae Hannibal, enjoyed a bit of a breakout last week. Hannibal was last on an SEC roster in 2021 with South Carolina, but bounced to Murray State for the 2022 season then followed Matt McMahon to LSU when he took the job ahead of this season.

As a player, Hannibal is a scrappy and smaller point guard. Not known as much of a scoring threat, but a nice distributor and a pesky defender off the bench for the Tigers. Except this week, he flashed as a scorer, racking up a 19-point night in a home win over Arkansas, which was capped off by a late layup to give LSU a three-point advantage and help seal the deal.

A breakout for Hannibal in the purple and yellow, and with his key contributions in the win over a ranked Hogs squad, he more than deserved such recognition.