It’s still early, but if any team in the SEC has defied preseason predictions it’s LSU, which was picked to finish 15th in the 16-team league. The Tigers of coach Matt McMahon and Georgia, another surprising team, are tied for the second-best record in the league (8-1), behind yet another mildly surprising team, 9-0 Vanderbilt, which was picked to finish 11th.
Granted, none of those three teams have played the brutal schedules Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Florida have, but winning is winning, and LSU has lost only to SMU so far. One of the biggest reasons for the Tigers’ fast start is 6-foot-1 junior point guard Dedan Thomas, who is second on the team in scoring (15.2 points per game) and leads the SEC in assists (6.3 per game).
McMahon and his staff went into last spring’s crucial transfer portal recruiting melee in desperate need of a point guard, and they found their man in UNLV transfer Thomas, who last season earned All-Mountain West Conference honors after finishing ninth in the league in scoring and third in assists.
Thomas is a bad dude, an old-school point guard who, although he’s shot decently from three-point range in the past (35.8 percent in two years in Las Vegas), is only 7 of 27 (25.9 percent) from behind the arc this season. He does his damage at the rim — he’s shooting 56.5 percent from two-point range — and the free-throw line, where he’s already been 46 times this season after averaging 147 attempts a year at UNLV. So far he’s cashing in at 82.6 percent.
Thomas was particularly effective in the game that essentially won the ACC/SEC Challenge for the SEC. At Boston College on Dec. 3, he scored 23 points, grabbed 4 rebounds, handed out 7 assists and drew 9 fouls. He was 7 of 8 from the free-throw line in a 78-69 overtime win. The Challenge ended 9-7 in favor of the SEC, so that clutch win in Boston kept it from finishing in an 8-8 tie.
“He’s everything we were hoping for and more,” McMahon tells Hoops HQ. “He’s an awesome teammate and a phenomenal young man. Things can get scary when you get into the portal. You have a limited time to get intel and background. But he’s been great. He’s got great vision, is a really creative passer, and shoots it well off the catch. He’s continuing to impove off the bounce. He’s just a dynamic point guard.”
Thomas is a former five-star recruit whose father, Dedan Thomas Sr., also played at UNLV. The younger Thomas was content to follow in his father’s footsteps until a coaching change forced his hand and he entered the portal. So far, he’s followed the same track he did in the Mountain West, where he was Co-Freshman of the Year and third-team all-league in his first season and third-team all-conference again last season.
Bethea adds to Alabama’s backcourt battalion
Between the rugged schedule it has played and all the points it has scored, Alabama has made its share of headlines this season, so it’s understandable that 6-foot-5, 190-pound Jalil Bethea might have been overlooked, if not forgotten, despite the fact he’s going to be a key cog for the Crimson Tide.
Bethea, a transfer from Miami, missed Alabama’s first seven games while recovering from a foot injury. He returned on Dec. 3, scoring two points in a victory over Clemson, but his real debut came four days later in a 97-55 rout of UTSA. Bethea scored 21 points in just 22 minutes, grabbed 6 rebounds, handed out 2 assists and made 2 steals. Best of all in coach Nate Oats’s three-point-centric offense, he knocked down 5 of 10 shots from behind the arc.
Bethea fits into Alabama’s system perfectly. He’s got good positional size, is a great athlete who won the slam dunk contest at the 2024 McDonald’s All-American game, and then there’s that stroke of his.
“He may be the most talented kid on the team,” Oats says. “He’s got all the tools. His issue is consistency. Picking the right moments. He’s got a lot to learn on the mental side of things, and he’s got to understand shot selection. If he learns it, he’s going to be a pro.”
Bethea didn’t have to be coaxed into the portal last spring. That was an easy decision after Miami finished 7-24, in part because long-time coach Jim Larrañaga abruptly retired in December 2024. Bethea, a former five-star prospect, had been recruited by Alabama, so Oats and his staff didn’t have to go through the usual portal frenzy to get good information about Bethea or build a relationship with him. As a freshman at Miami, Bethea averaged 7.1 points and 2.1 rebounds, but his shooting percentages were low — 36.8 percent from the field and 32.6 percent from three.
Against UTSA, Bethea seems to have cleaned up his shot selection issues and was also perfect from the free-throw line (4 of 4). Along with Labaron Philon Jr., Latrell Wrightsell Jr., Houston Malette, Aiden Holloway (when he returns from a wrist injury) and freshman Davion Hannah, the addition of Bethea gives the Tide one of the deepest backcourts in the nation. And, like Bethea proved in his first extended action of the season, all have the greenest of lights to hoist away from behind the arc and aren’t afraid to take advantage.
SEC Power Rankings for the 2025-26 Season
The SEC is coming off the greatest conference season in college basketball history and remains packed with Tournament contenders. Can they repeat?
Around the Rim
• The biggest question in the state of Kentucky right now is “what’s wrong with the Big Blue?” The answer is easy: There’s nothing wrong with Kentucky that a few more made shots won’t fix. Meanwhile, the Wildcats are getting booed — like they did after a 94-59 whipping by Gonzaga in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Dec. 5 — because of some epic shooting dry spells.
In a 67-64 homecourt loss to North Carolina in the ACC/SEC Challenge on Dec. 2, the Wildcats didn’t score for 10 minutes and 25 seconds in the second half, clanking 13 shots during the stretch. It was the program’s longest scoring drought in eight years.
In the Gonzaga game, Kentucky missed its first 10 shots and made just 16 field goals in the game (in 60 attempts). Gonzaga’s post monster Graham Ike scored 28 points and made more two-point field goals (10) than Kentucky (nine). Those 10 missed shots to start a game were the most by the Wildcats in eight years.
For the season, the Wildcats, who have lost to Louisville, Michigan State, North Carolina and Gonzaga after a promising exhibition game victory over Purdue in late October, are shooting 31.9 percent from three. That’s 248th in Division I.
Kentucky coach Mark Pope heard the boos raining down as his team left the floor at Bridgestone. To his credit, he takes ownership. “All the boos tonight (were) incredibly well deserved, mostly for me,” Pope said in his post-game interview. “We have to fix it.”
In his defense, Pope can’t make shots for his team. And he can’t do anything to make Pitt transfer Jaland Lowe (shoulder), Alabama transfer Mouhamed Dioubate (ankle) and Arizona State transfer Jayden Quaintance (torn ACL) recover any faster from injuries. A healthy Lowe would be a huge help. Last season at Pitt he was one of just eight players in Division I to average at least 16.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists. His three-point shooting percentage was low (28.8) because he played with a broken finger on his shooting hand, but he’s a drive-and-dish guy who can get teammates open shots.
• Speaking of struggles, Tennessee was on top of the world after beating Houston in the second round of the Player’s Era Championship to improve its record to 7-0. But since then, the Vols have blown a 12-point second-half lead in losing to Kansas, lost at Syracuse when a short jumper by Jaylen Carey fell off the rim in the final seconds, and were handled by Illinois in Nashville.
In those three losses, the Vols’ top two scorers, Nate Ament and Ja’Kobi Gillespie, shot a combined 28 of 90 (31.1 percent) from the field and 7 of 33 (21.2) from three. After Gillespie went off for 32 points against Rutgers in the first round of the Player’s Era, he was a marked man. And Ament, who has already won three SEC Freshman of the Week awards, is also a target as teams try to get physical with him. As good as he is, Ament still packs only about 200 pounds on a 6-foot-10 frame and is susceptible to getting pushed around.
The strategy for Gillespie is to double-team the ball out of his hands or chase him around so he doesn’t get open catch-and-shoot threes.
But the losses to Syracuse and Illinois can’t be pinned solely on Ament and Gillespie. Against Syracuse, the Vols shot 53.3 percent (13 of 25) from the free-throw line and committed 17 turnovers. In the Illinois game, Tennessee shot 44.4 percent from the line (8 of 18) and made 14 turnovers. It’s hard to win when you can’t cash in on free throws and you cough up the ball with such regularity.
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes is looking for regularity of a different kind. “It is the inconsistency of where we are right now. We’ve gotta get some consistency,” Barnes said after the Illinois game.
Part of the problem is that three of Tennessee’s starters — 6-foot-11 senior Felix Okpara, 6-foot-3 sophomore Bishop Boswell and 6-foot-9 junior Cade Phillips — aren’t prolific scorers and have earned their spots more because of their defensive ability. The Vols have to get scoring from other players, which could mean continued larger roles for Vanderbilt transfer Carey, who delivered 22 points and 9 rebounds against Syracuse, and Louisiana Tech transfer Amaree Abram, one of the Vols’ better three-point shooters. Carey could help his cause by, as Barnes said, becoming more consistent. After that big game against the Orange, he was just 2 of 7 from the floor and scored five points against Illinois.
The Vols announced on Dec. 8 that Phillips, who has been struggling with a sore shoulder for months, finally decided it was time to check out. He’ll undergo season-ending surgery and submit a medical redshirt request to the NCAA. Phillips’ absence will give Carey and freshman DeWayne Brown more time at the power forward position.
• The SEC had a crummy weekend, starting with Kentucky’s loss to Gonzaga on Dec. 5 and ending with Texas A&M’s loss to SMU on Dec. 7 in a game the Aggies led by four with less than a minute to play. In between, Missouri, LSU, Oklahoma, Auburn and Tennessee all lost by double-figure margins.
Despite that carnage, the league is still No. 1 in the latest KenPom rankings, comfortably ahead of the Big 12 and the Big Ten. Vanderbilt, picked to finish 11th in the SEC’s preseason poll, is one of the reasons for the lofty KenPom perch. The Commodores are tied with Duke and Michigan State for the most Quad 1 victories (four) in the latest NCAA NET rankings.
• Because of a loaded freshman class and the fact he plays on the most experienced team in the SEC, 6-foot-2 freshman Darius Acuff Jr. of Arkansas could tend to be overlooked. But this week he broke the stranglehold Ament has had on the SEC Freshman of the Week Award by averaging 17.5 points, nine assists and five boards against Louisville and Fresno State. He came close to a double-double in both games, delivering 17 points and 10 assists against the Cardinals and 18 and 9 against the Bulldogs.
Acuff, a native of Detroit, played his last two seasons at IMG Academy in Florida. He’s admired Arkansas coach John Calipari from afar even before he entered high school and developed a relationship with the coach based on the number of guards he’s coached that went on to play in the NBA. Acuff will be the next one.
Games to Watch
Texas vs. UConn at Hartford, Conn. on Dec. 12 (FOX). The Longhorns (7-3) of first-year coach Sean Miller could use a signature win after getting punked by ACC teams Duke (75-60 loss) and Virginia (88-68 loss at home) and losing to Arizona State in the Maui Invitational. Such an opportunity awaits against the No. 5-ranked Huskies. It won’t be easy — just ask defending national champion Florida, which lost to UConn in the Jimmy V Classic on Dec. 9 — but at least the game won’t be played on the Huskies’ homecourt in Storrs.
Arkansas vs. Texas Tech in Dallas on Dec. 13 (ESPN2). The Razorbacks can gain a measure of revenge for their conference after the Red Raiders put an 82-58 thrashing on previously undefeated LSU on Dec. 7. Arkansas scored a big win over then No. 6 Louisville on Dec. 3, proving, after losses to Michigan State and Duke, it’s capable of beating an elite team.
Alabama vs. Arizona in Birmingham on Dec. 13 (ESPN). This could be the premier game in college basketball on Saturday. The newly crowned No. 1 team in the country, Arizona will be trying to beat the high-scoring Crimson Tide in the C.M. Newton Classic, named for the legendary former Alabama coach and played at a site that, although it isn’t Tuscaloosa, won’t be neutral. The game will pit former Crimson Tide guard Jaden Bradley, who leads Arizona in assists (3.8 per game) and is second in scoring (14.5), against his old team.
Meet your guide
