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Myron Medcalf, ESPN Staff Writer
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Last season, Mark Pope said he believed the Big 12 was the toughest conference in America as he led BYU during its first year in the league.
As Kentucky‘s new men’s basketball coach this season, however, he said he’s convinced 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.
Pope said the SEC, which has nine teams in the poll, should be feared.
“Right now, it is a gauntlet that is to be respected and probably feared a little bit,” Pope said Tuesday during SEC media day. “And all of that is exactly what we want. It’s really setting the standard for college basketball right now.”
The disruption created by the transfer portal and conference realignment has mostly helped the SEC and the Big 12, ranked 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 just the second time since 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, however, say they believe this season’s version of the SEC tops the rest of the conferences in the country.
Alabama returns its top players from last season’s Final Four run, the first in school history. And no other conference can claim that half of its members have a spot in the AP poll. Plus, SEC stars Mark Sears, Johni Broome and Wade Taylor IV all have earned multiple preseason honors thus far and will enter the season as legitimate candidates for the Wooden Award.
“We’re the best league in college basketball,” Georgia coach Mike White said. “It just is.”
Auburn’s Bruce Pearl has been in the league since 2005, when he took over at Tennessee. He said the depth of the league now, with Texas and Oklahoma on board, is the strongest he has seen. As a result, he said the SEC may warrant as many as a dozen NCAA tournament teams. The record number of bids for a single conference in the same NCAA tournament is 11 by the Big East in the 2010-11 season.
“I’ve never seen it, top to bottom, as good as it is right now,” Pearl said. “There are three or four teams absolutely good enough to be at the Final Four. There are seven or eight teams good enough to win this league. And there are 10 to 12 teams that can get into the NCAA tournament. I’ve never seen it this good.”
For Pope, it’s déjà vu. He led BYU into the Big 12 a year ago as that league began an expansion that ultimately added eight teams to the mix in two seasons. This season, he arrives amid the SEC’s growth.
“We walked into the Big 12 last year for the first time, the toughest league in the country,” Pope said. “And as things go, we get to walk into the toughest league in the country now in the SEC. It’s pretty remarkable.”