SEC basketball Media Day: 6 coaching changes means new faces, new styles in SEC

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The biggest number getting attention at SEC Media Day on Wednesday was 6 — the number of new coaches who will be roaming SEC sidelines this fall.

Granted, it’s really 5 because Mike White just moved a bit north in his switch from Florida Gator to Georgia Bulldog. But with nearly half the league making a coaching change, the tenor of comments on Media Day suggested that it’s not the same old Kentucky-and-everybody-else world that SEC hoops occupied. None other than John Calipari traced the progression at Media Day.

“What’s happened is that the TV network has generated financial support for the programs, and many of the teams in our league invested in basketball,” Calipari said. “The problem is when they really invest, you’ve got to win.”

“We’re all chasing football to a certain extent,” added White, who has had to chase the oblong ball at two imposing schools now.

Missouri coach Dennis Gates made the same connection.

“You have great, great football tradition,” said Gates of the SEC. But he also acknowledged, “There has been a growth in our conference when it comes to the importance of basketball.”

Enough winning wasn’t happening at half a dozen schools (including not winning against the NCAA in Baton Rouge), and the league has shifted accordingly. What a few seasons ago was a league of veteran coaches trying to snag one-and-dones is rapidly transitioning into a league of up-and-coming young coaches who are significantly building teams out of players who sometimes don’t look that much younger than them.

Matt McMahon, who a year ago was the head coach at Murray State, is now trying to meld 13 new players into his inaugural LSU team. He called the situation a product of “the biggest changes in the history of sports” — the COVID pandemic, the development of the transfer portal, and the implementation of NIL permission among them.

“We’re kind of figuring this out as we go,” McMahon said. “We want to build this hybrid model of a team.”

Lamont Paris at South Carolina is also part of the SEC’s house-cleaning movement.

“It’s a lot of good coaches,” he said of his new contemporaries, also citing the different styles of play involved. Paris might be the best evidence of that, as a young coach who cites Wisconsin slowball legend Bo Ryan as a mentor. Gamecocks graduate forward Hayden Brown noted that he was grateful that after playing against Paris’ defenses, he’d get to instead be playing that defense.

New Mississippi State coach Chris Jans denied any particular ambitions for the SEC, and attributed the turnover to a coincidence of timing.

Florida’s Todd Golden, who might be the SEC coaching leader for getting carded for buying alcohol, said that he thought the turnover within the SEC was “kind of fluky,” but acknowledged, “The coaching in this league has really taken off in the last 7 or 8 years.”

“All of us built up resumes,” Golden said of the SEC’s new coaches. “Some at places where they didn’t have a lot of success. Obviously, for us, it’s a big challenge to come in here with coaches like Cal, Bruce (Pearl), and Muss (Eric Musselman). For me, I feel like it’s time to come in here and see if we can challenge those guys and raise the level of this league.”

Missouri’s Gates echoed those sentiments.

“There’s a style of play that you’ll see completely different maybe from the past. When you look at the backgrounds, that new group has come near and far but they have come from great basketball tradition— their family trees, coaches they learned from, or even regions of play. It will be an interesting style of play that will be added to our conference.”

Rick Barnes, the eldest of SEC head coaches, expressed his approval of the new group. “They’ve all had success, or they wouldn’t be here,” Barnes said. “Any coach that’s in this league has been successful somewhere, and you’ve got to get ready to play against different styles of basketball.”

Not that the old coaches are quite ready to cede the field.

“When young coaches come into the league, you do a lot of scouting early,” Barnes said. He paused a beat and admitted, “We’ve already started that, to be quite frank.”

Score one for the old guys. But Wednesday demonstrated that the young guys are on the way.

Joe Cox

Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.