After getting only three teams in the NCAA tournament last season, the SEC was once again the lowest-rated Power 5 conference in college basketball. Even with this lack of postseason success for the most part last season, schools in the conference are taking the necessary steps to build up the league and shed the name tag of Kentucky and everyone else.
Before last season began, many schools in the SEC made coaching changes. Tennessee let go of Donnie Tyndall following an NCAA investigation and hired Rick Barnes after he and Texas agreed to part ways. Barnes led the Longhorns program for 17 seasons. He left as the Longhorns all-time winningest coach with over 400 victories and 16 NCAA tournament appearances.
Mississippi State also landed a big time head coach before last season. After letting go of Rick Ray, the Bulldogs hired Ben Howland. Howland was let go by UCLA in 2013 after a decade in Los Angeles. Howland led the Bruins to three Final Four appearances, including a defeat to Florida in the 2006 national championship game.
Of the new head coaches last season, Avery Johnson and his Alabama team made the largest stride. Alabama fired Anthony Grant during the 2014-2015 season and hired Johnson shortly after the season ended. Johnson, a former NBA coach of the year with the Dallas Mavericks, won the most games of any new head coach ever at Alabama with 18. After being picked to finish 13th in the SEC before the season, Johnson led the Tide to four wins over ranked opponents and a berth in the NIT after spending all of February and March on the bubble.
The trio of Barnes, Howland and Johnson were big-time hires for the conference. Florida chose a different route to replace Billy Donovan. After Donovan left for the NBA, the Gators hired Mike White from Louisiana Tech. White is regarded as one of the best up-and-coming head coaches in the NCAA. His first year in Gainesville ended in an NIT tournament appearance. Multiple conference losses down the stretch inevitably doomed their chances at an NCAA bid.
Vanderbilt also had to replace a longtime head coach. They lost Kevin Stallings to Pittsburgh after last season. They hired Bryce Drew from Valparaiso after he led his alma mater to the NCAA tournament twice in five seasons.
With the hiring of both experienced head coaches and two of the highly touted up-and-coming coaches, the conference has the right guys on the sideline to improve the league. Many schools in the conference have a long-tenured head coach with a winning pedigree on the sideline.
John Calipari needs no explanation with what he has accomplished the last twenty years. Mike Anderson (Arkansas), Billy Kennedy (Texas A&M), Bruce Pearl (Auburn) and Frank Martin (South Carolina) have all made a run into the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament in their coaching careers. All but Kennedy even managed a run to the Elite Eight.Aside from them, Mark Fox at Georgia and Adam Kennedy at Ole Miss have both managed multiple NCAA tournament appearances at their current programs.
Over the past few years, the conference and most of its schools have taken steps to improve the overall quality of the league. The SEC has the resources and the tradition to improve and get more teams into the NCAA tournament. An improvement in quality would make sure that a 25-win team like South Carolina last season doesn’t get left on the wrong side of the bubble.