SEC basketball has fully arrived, and it looks like it’s here to stay.
For years it seemed like the best conference in college basketball bounced between the ACC, the Big East, the Big Ten, and the Big 12 (sorry, Pac-12), with the SEC usually lagging just behind, but that has completely flipped. Warning shots were fired in 2023-24 with SEC teams starting to tool up, and the build reached completion last season in 2024-25 when the league was one of the strongest that college basketball has ever seen. With the huge levels of spending around the league–don’t expect things to be taking a step back.
For the past few seasons we have seen a lot of coaching changes in the league, but with so many teams operating at a high level there wasn’t a need for many firings which is perhaps an indication of just how strong the league is when you look at other conferences where a number of programs were looking for new people to lead things. While the SEC didn’t see many changes they did see two very interesting ones that could change the complexion of the league–so it’s certainly worth getting into.
The first move was Texas moving on from Rodney Terry, perhaps the most unsurprising move of the carousel season. Terry was an uninspired promotion from an assistant position following the dismissal of Chris Beard in the middle of the season, with the Longhorns performing well enough the rest of the way for Texas to shrug their shoulders and allow Terry to continue. Following a disappointing season where the Longhorns did sneak into the NCAA Tournament as a play-in team and lost, Texas fired Terry and hired the coach of the Xavier team that beat Texas in that play-in game–Sean Miller.
Before we talk about Sean Miller, it’s worth discussing why I think this move is important. Texas is a program that is capable of operating at the absolute pinnacle of the sport, one that could absolutely make a Final Four or win a Championship and have it not seem surprising at all. This seemed to be the case when they were in the Big 12, and became even more apparent when they came to the SEC. However–with Terry at the helm, it seemed like they had a hard ceiling, and one that wasn’t very high, that kept them from college basketball relevance. A change in leadership means that the SEC, a league that already has a number of elite basketball programs, now has a Texas team that is set to enter the mix as a true contender which wasn’t the case a year ago.
Sean Miller is someone who had Arizona consistently competing at the top of college basketball, particularly from 2011-2018 where he had three Elite Eights and two Sweet Sixteens. At this point, some of you will, perhaps rightfully, point out that he wasn’t able to “win the big one.” Miller’s inability to make a Final Four despite having had a number of incredible teams is a storyline that follows him, as is some of his well-publicized first round exits as the higher seed. I am not here to tell you that he doesn’t deserve criticism for the NCAA Tournament falters–but I think from an SEC standpoint, it’s important to see how well his teams played in the regular season and how he was able to earn high seeds and build up the level of the conference. This consistent ability to win at a high level in the regular season is something that will help the SEC–though it will make for another frustratingly difficult league opponent.
Possibly an even more interesting change happened at Texas A&M with Buzz Williams taking the Maryland job and making way for Samford’s Bucky McMillan. Williams was someone who played the game in an old-school fashion–incredibly physical, grinding, slow basketball that dragged every game into the mud. Well, Bucky Ball (as it was coined at Samford) could not be more different. McMillan, like Golden, is a big fan of analytics and uses it to help shape his style of play. Samford was 18th in the country in pace last season and was 30th in three-point attempts–and if that sounds familiar, it’s because it looks a lot like how Florida plays. McMillan did do a lot of crazy things at Samford that he likely won’t do in the SEC such as press off misses and trap different actions aggressively in the halfcourt, but what he will do almost certainly is take a Texas A&M team that has been one of the most right fight “three yards and a cloud of dust” basketball programs and flip it 180 degrees to one that is fast paced and launching a ton of threes. This is certainly interesting from a Florida standpoint as there will now be another team in the league looking to play a similar style, and that should make for a fascinating matchup.
These changes at the Texas schools appear to be positive ones for the league, and while it seems like SEC basketball couldn’t get any better–somehow two important programs could be set to make big steps.