There are talented tournament fields everywhere this Feast Week. The Gulf Coast Showcase has a relatively strong mid-major field headlined by Murray State, Duquesne (which absolutely BLASTED Penn State on Friday) and Texas Southern. Four capable teams — Clemson, UMass (already a winner over Harvard), Creighton and Rutgers — will tussle in another four-team field in Vegas. Looking further ahead, Atlantis tips off on Wednesday before a handful of other events kick off on Thanksgiving Day and beyond. As we did with Puerto Rico and Charleston last week, here’s a look at the event favorite, a dark horse, and the teams who have the most on the line this week. We’ll also highlight a player and a storyline to watch.

Maui Invitational

Despite some early struggles, Bill Self and Kansas are still the clear favorite in Maui. (Getty)

• Favorite: Kansas. Even with no Cheick Diallo or Brannen Greene for the week and the second half collapse to Michigan State in Chicago notwithstanding, the Jayhawks are still the clear favorite in Maui as the only top 10 team in this tournament. Perry Ellis and Jamari Traylor are seniors. Frank Mason and Wayne Selden are juniors. This is an experienced team that might be going on its last ride together. As usual, there’s chatter about this being the year the Big 12 title streak is broken. Winning the Maui title would probably pump the brakes on that notion, at least for the time being.
• Darkhorse: UCLA. In terms of talent and potential, the Bruins are a clear sleeper. Aaron Holiday, Bryce Alford, Tony Parker — you could easily see a team with talented pieces like these upsetting a still-not-quite-right Kansas in the semifinal and then taking out Indiana or Vanderbilt the next night. Of course, they’re flaky enough that they could brick the last Maui quarter to UNLV, especially after that whole Monmouth thing.

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Before we dive into some candidates, let’s define what we mean by “breakout.” Preseason All-American Ben Simmons is a pretty safe bet to have a great season. The same goes for potential first overall pick in next year’s draft, Skal Labissiere. Predicting that the freshmen we’ve been hearing about for years will step in and excel doesn’t make for interesting reading. Instead, here are several returning SEC players who saw little action last year that could become major parts of their respective teams this season.

Devon Baulkman’s shooting touch could make him a key part of Rick Barnes’ first team at Tennessee (scout.com).

• Devon Baulkman, Tennessee. The JuCo transfer only averaged 14.7 minutes per game last year under Donnie Tyndall, but could be poised to become a key cog in Rick Barnes‘ offense. Barnes has talked about playing up-tempo and letting his players shoot the three at will. This was borne out in the Vols exhibition win over Alabama-Huntsville where they launched 38 three pointers. Baulkman took eight of those shots, and showed promise from deep last season by making 38.2 percent of his 68 three-point attempts. While Robert Hubbs, Kevin Punter and Armani Moore will be the focal points of the Tennessee offense this year, Baulkman could carve himself a valuable niche on the perimeter.
• Moses Kingsley, Arkansas. Kingsley has been an advanced stat nerd’s dream, posting an elite block percentage (11.7%) and solid total rebounding percentage (13.9%) in limited minutes over his two years in Fayetteville. Mike Anderson‘s system by its nature precludes players, especially big men, from playing 25 plus minutes per game. But Anderson is playing with a light deck after an offseason of roster turnover and Kingsley is all of sudden one of his few frontcourt options. He should get plenty of minutes, and has demonstrated enough rim-protecting potential to predict that he’ll have a very productive year.

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For a conference that has been viewed for a while as a basketball underachiever, the SEC’s coaching seats are surprisingly cool. There are a number of factors, of course, that go into that determination. For one, the league turned over nearly a third of its coaches during the offseason with four new hires at Florida, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Alabama. There are also several stalwarts who aren’t going anywhere unless they choose to do so — guys like Kentucky’s John Calipari and Vanderbilt’s Kevin Stallings – and several more trending toward that status in Georgia’s Mark Fox and Ole Miss’ Andy Kennedy. But college athletics wouldn’t be what it is without some modicum of hot seat speculation, so here are the four SEC coaches feeling the most pressure in 2014-15.

Johnny Jones has a talented team and a potential top-5 pick in Ben Simmons. Will that be enough to pick up his first NCAA Tournament win at LSU? (SportsNola.com)

• Johnny Jones, LSU. Jones has won at least 19 games in each of his three seasons in Baton Rogue; he was extended through 2019 before last season; he is an LSU alumnus; and he has brought a lot of NBA talent to campus. That’s the long way of saying his job is relatively safe no matter what happens this year. Nevertheless, Jones could quiet a lot of his critics by taking a very talented team to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Despite an NBA-caliber frontcourt, there were some inexplicable low points for the Tigers last year — losing the conference opener to Missouri and the SEC Tournament opener to Auburn are but two notable examples. LSU then capped off its inconsistent year by blowing a 14-point halftime lead to lose to NC State in the final minute of the Tigers’ NCAA Tournament opener. Similar letdowns this season would only perpetuate the idea that Jones can’t get the most out of his talent. On the other hand, some clever coaching could make this team a match-up nightmare since both Ben Simmons and Tim Quarterman are big, versatile players with the appropriate skill set to run an offense. Cobbling together a productive frontcourt, however, could be a challenge. Jones will need to find the right combination of Arizona transfer Craig Victor, Brian Bridgewater, Aaron Epps, Darcy Malone and Elbert Robinson to support Simmons and his talented backcourt. One solution could be to go small with Simmons playing power forward, but the injury to Keith Hornsby could make that difficult early in the season. In short, the Tigers’ roster poses both a number of challenges and intriguing possibilities, but the ultimate goal of getting deep into the NCAA Tournament would go a long way towards silencing Jones’ detractors.

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The college basketball season is a few days away from starting. On Friday a full slate of games will begin, with ESPN‘s marathon of hoops kicking off shortly after, all of which will start the season off with a bang. It will also be buried under the wasteland that is football. Not that there’s anything wrong with men literally ruining their bodies for our entertainment, yet I do wish we would pay a little more attention in the realm of shooty hoops when the season starts. Every game, especially if your program is not an annual world-beater, means something at the end of the day. I mean, this isn’t Major League Baseball or anything.

Oh Yes, It’s Back…

With the season quickly approaching there are going to be many bandwagon supporters of the sport. I wrestle with which one is worst: ambassadors of the sport who turn a blind eye to anything possibly wrong with it, or those who ignore it for 10-ish months of the year, then pretend they like it when the season starts, disappear a week later, finally culminating with their “undying love” of the sport showing again come March. There should be some sort of survey one must take which rates your college basketball love.

Example: Do you love crowds?

• A) Yes
• B) No
• C) Lobsters

If you answered “A”, then you are a true college basketball fan. You are also admitting you like a sport as much for the atmosphere as you do the quality of the play on the court — as the latter isn’t nearly the same quality as the NBA’s, but accepting it never will be only makes one enjoy the sport.  If you answered “No”, well, you are probably a communist. Anyone who answered “Lobsters” is certainly reading the right column. Honestly, A Column of Enchantment is your go to source for lobster news, opinion, and insight.

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It’s just a few days until the regular season starts and there are already several significant injuries and absences throughout the SEC. The preseason edition of Quotable & Notable looks at the effects of some of these early roster complications.

Keith Hornsby’s early season absence pushes freshman Antonio Blakeney into a bigger role (northjersey.com).

• “We’ll have to make some adjustments but it will be difficult. He’s the glue. Night in and night out you know what you’re going to get from him.“ – Johnny Jones. The LSU coach here is referring to senior guard Keith Hornsby, who will miss the bulk of non-conference play after undergoing an undisclosed recent “medical procedure.” Hornsby quietly had one of the better seasons in the league last year (13.4 PPG, 4.2 RPG, 2.1 APG, 39.3% 3FG) and is projected to be a big part of what the Tigers are trying to accomplish. There’s no shortage of depth in the backcourt, though, since Jones can simply hand over more of his workload to freshman Antonio Blakeney — a player whom, incidentally, was just named to the Jerry West Shooting Guard of the Year Award watch list. Josh Gray and Jalyn Patterson, despite inconsistent campaigns a year ago, were fixtures in the backcourt rotation and will also be in the mix. But Hornsby’s loss still stings. The steady production the Tigers figured to get from he and Tim Quarterman was supposed to allow Blakeney and Ben Simmons to seamlessly transition to the college game. With Hornsby now on the mend, pressure shifts to the freshmen to carry the load offensively. The good news? Other than a Thanksgiving trip to the Legends Classic in Brooklyn where LSU will face Marquette and either Arizona State or North Carolina State, the Tigers’ schedule is full of games in which they’ll be heavy favorites.

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The SEC got an early start in its annual quest to shed its label as an underachieving basketball conference. By swapping out Anthony Grant, Rick Ray and Donnie Tyndall for Avery Johnson, Ben Howland and Rick Barnes, the league upgraded in coaching talent and brand name recognition. Losing Florida’s Billy Donovan to the NBA was counterproductive to that pursuit, but by and large, the SEC was the clear springtime winner when the coaching carousel came to a halt. Now the focus shifts to what happens on the court — resumes don’t much matter if you’re not winning games. Here are several ways how the SEC can sustain the momentum to improve its national standing this upcoming season.

Can Bruce Pearl help raise the SEC’s national profile? (athlonsports.com)

• More and higher seeds: Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: The best way for the SEC to get more national respect is to put more teams in the NCAA Tournament. Last year’s five teams invited on Selection Sunday counts as solid improvement on this front. This year you could make an early, sight-unseen case that six or even seven SEC teams could be in position to make the field by March. That volume would be great, but even if the number of teams ends up as fewer than six, it would be good to see a few higher seeds. Last year, the league’s seeds other than Kentucky came in at #5, #9, #10 and #11. There was no other SEC team that was consistently in the Top 25 last season.

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Here we go… headfirst into another season heralded by our 2015-16 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight rather than 30 days from now. Over the next month you’ll get one reason per day until we reach the new season on Friday, November 13. We’ve captured what we believe were the 30 most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head in astonishment. You can find all of this year’s released posts here.

#14 – Where Comeback Pack Happens.

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 preseasons.

Every house hands out something different on Halloween. Elation or disappointment are just a ring of the doorbell away, and you never know which one is behind the door. It’s much the same in the SEC, where each coach enters the season with plans to cook up something unique. So saunter up to the door and get your bag ready, because SEC coaches are doling out the goodies.

King-sized anything – John Calipari. Don’t pretend like you got dropped off in the country club section of town without hopes of piling your plastic pumpkin full of king-sized Snickers bars. How can Kentucky fans be anything but satisfied with what Coach Cal has served up since landing in Lexington? One championship and four Final Four appearances in six years are enough to keep any fan base content. 2015-16 should be more of the same, with All-American caliber sophomore point guard Tyler Ulis joining forces with another loaded freshmen class. But one of the keys towards making sure this is another king-sized season is a pair of players that are more accustomed to playing “fun-sized” roles in Lexington. Senior Alex Poythress was limited to just eight games last year after tearing his ACL, while junior Marcus Lee has never averaged more than 10 minutes per game in a season. Elite recruit and potential top-five pick Skal Labissiere will be the headliner in the frontcourt, but both Poythress and Lee will be heavily relied upon to provide production alongside the star freshman.

Pixy Stix – Mike Anderson. When you want a sugar rush — and fast — you reach for the sweet simplicity of Pixy Stix. When you want to watch fast-paced basketball, you watch the Arkansas Razorbacks. Mike Anderson’s teams have ranked among the top 25 teams nationally in Kenpom adjusted tempo in all four of his years in Fayetteville. However, the Pixy Stix sugar rush is also accompanied by an inevitable crash — something Anderson will look to avoid this season. Four of his top five scorers are gone, and his rotation was further complicated by off-the-court problems over the summer. Even more trouble came when one of his top recruits, Ted Kapita, wasn’t able to qualify. It might all add up to a trying transition season in Fayetteville, as the Hogs may fall far short of the success of last season’s group, whose season ended in the third round of the Tournament. Still, if nothing else, freshman Jimmy Whitt should be able to light up the scoreboard — even if the points are as empty as the calories in that paper tube of sugar.

Need A Rush? Grab Some Pixy Stix This Halloween…Or Watch Mike Anderson’s Team Play Basketball

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Yesterday, we looked at the freshmen or transfers who figure to make a first-year impact for half of the teams in the SEC. Today we do the same with the other half of the league, including two freshmen who could be top-10 picks in the upcoming NBA Draft and a transfer who has some international experience.

LSU – Ben Simmons. Simmons was a major get for Johnny Jones, a coach who will try to prove his critics wrong by showing that he can get the most out of a talented roster. The Australian-born wing will almost certainly be a top-five pick in next year’s NBA Draft and is without question the most talented player Jones has had, which is saying something. Simmons is 6’10”, explosively athletic, and according to DraftExpress, was the best passer at the Nike Academy over the summer. Those kinds of skills are a coach’s dream — Simmons, Tim Quarterman and fellow freshman Antonio Blakeney should make the Tigers a fun team to watch in transition this season.

Ben Simmons is as elite a prospect and talent as there is in college basketball. Can Johnny Jones cash in on that?

Auburn – Kareem Canty. How do you replace scorers like KT Harrell and Antoine Mason? Simple — add yet another high-volume shooting transfer player with a scoring pedigree. Canty, who spent his freshman season averaging 16.2 PPG at Marshall, will assume that role on Bruce Pearl’s second Auburn team. His latest recruiting class generated a lot of buzz, but Canty should be able to take some of the offensive pressure from the freshmen. He’s not the three-point marksman Harrell was, but he’s a proven scorer. In a three-game stretch against Vanderbilt, Penn State and West Virginia two years ago, Canty scored 18, 28 and 16 points, respectively. That kind of offensive production could allow Auburn to rise up the SEC ladder despite the loss of such a prolific three-point shooter and scorer. Read the rest of this entry »

The SEC coaching carousel’s dust appears to have settled with Avery Johnson, Rick Barnes and Ben Howland having moved into their new offices at Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi State, respectively. Kentucky’s John Calipari is making the recruiting rounds with a new pitch after seven more of his players declared for this summer’s NBA Draft. Anthony Grant is getting re-acclimated to the assistant’s chair next to Billy Donovan at Florida that has worked out so well for both of them in the past. There’s still more to be determined about how the SEC will look heading into next season, but here are some way too early predictions on the season to come.

Tyler Ulis should contend for SEC Player of the Year honors next season. (AP Photo)

Coach of the Year

• John Calipari, Kentucky

Player of the Year

• Tyler Ulis, Kentucky

Freshman/Newcomer of the Year

• Ben Simmons, LSU

All-SEC First Team

• Tyler Ulis, PG, Kentucky
• Stefan Moody, SG, Ole Miss
• Danuel House, SF, Texas A&M
• Ben Simmons, SF, LSU
• Skal Labissiere, C, Kentucky

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