I don't know a lot about Martinez, but no, I don't expect we'll be in the top five of the SEC.
But who knows, last year the SEC had four just incredibly good teams at the top of the league that were all legitimate national title contenders.
I'm not sure there's anyone that good this year. Maybe Florida. I don't think the league is going to take a huge step back or anything, in fact I still think it's probably going to be the best league, but it won't have quite the firepower at the top of it that we saw last year. The COVID seniors and the SEC's ability to stack talent in the transfer portal just created some insanely good teams last year.
But there's still some really good teams, so I think it's extremely unlikely we finish in the top five. I imagine Florida, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama will all start the season ranked. Maybe Auburn too.
There's just a lot of things working against us. I know that, especially in this new era, people think you can just put a team together overnight and roll the ball out there, but there's a lot more to it than that. Our head coach is new to major college basketball, he also hasn't worked with most of his assistants before (though some of them have worked with each other) there's a lot of program building off the court that we have to do.
And then there's the on-the-court stuff. Three of the players you're expecting to be our best players aren't practicing right now (Isaacs, Agee and Mgbako, Isaacs hasn't really practiced at all yet), the players that are practicing are all having to learn to play a new style of basketball and build chemistry with each other because we have no established team "culture" at all.
That's just a ton of variables to really expect a high level of success.
But who knows, last year the SEC had four just incredibly good teams at the top of the league that were all legitimate national title contenders.
I'm not sure there's anyone that good this year. Maybe Florida. I don't think the league is going to take a huge step back or anything, in fact I still think it's probably going to be the best league, but it won't have quite the firepower at the top of it that we saw last year. The COVID seniors and the SEC's ability to stack talent in the transfer portal just created some insanely good teams last year.
But there's still some really good teams, so I think it's extremely unlikely we finish in the top five. I imagine Florida, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama will all start the season ranked. Maybe Auburn too.
There's just a lot of things working against us. I know that, especially in this new era, people think you can just put a team together overnight and roll the ball out there, but there's a lot more to it than that. Our head coach is new to major college basketball, he also hasn't worked with most of his assistants before (though some of them have worked with each other) there's a lot of program building off the court that we have to do.
And then there's the on-the-court stuff. Three of the players you're expecting to be our best players aren't practicing right now (Isaacs, Agee and Mgbako, Isaacs hasn't really practiced at all yet), the players that are practicing are all having to learn to play a new style of basketball and build chemistry with each other because we have no established team "culture" at all.
That's just a ton of variables to really expect a high level of success.