Tennessee and Texas A&M return top players — such as Santiago Vescovi for the Volunteers and Wade Taylor IV for the Aggies — from teams that made the NCAA basketball tournament this past March.
Alabama and Arkansas mined the transfer portal to replace a departed pair of NBA first-round picks apiece. Then there’s Kentucky, where John Calipari raked in his latest impressive haul of Big Blue-chip prospects.
It makes for a potentially interesting ride for the Southeastern Conference, where five teams will enter the 2023-24 season nationally ranked and harboring ambitions of becoming the first SEC team to make it to the Final Four since 2019.
Calipari was far from alone in having to replace much of his roster.
“It’s exciting because it’s so new to you as a head coach,” Calipari said. “But it’s also difficult to get them all to come together. How quickly can you do it? We’re all battling the same thing now. Well, we have a couple in our league that have teams back and they have a big advantage, and they should. They’ve got a bunch of guys back.”