Walking out of the interview room at the NBA Combine in Chicago last month, Missouri guard Tamar Bates was chatting about playing basketball in the SEC and how the league gauntlet had prepared him for the pros.
When it was noted that Bates was one of nearly two dozen SEC players invited to the predraft event, he nodded, turning back around to face the room.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Bates said, pointing out a couple of fellow SEC veterans still hanging around and listing off others that had just left.
A few minutes earlier, Bates summed up what playing in the conference over the past two seasons meant to him.
“I don’t know if anybody else referred to it as this, but my coaching staff, we call it the ‘NBA South.’ That’s where a lot of NBA players are,” he said. “I mean, you saw it this past year. I think it was beneficial, just because every team was good. It kind of emulates an NBA season, just because there wasn’t really a night off. Everybody we played was extremely talented. Most of the teams had NBA players. So I think it was beneficial for me.”
Bates, who spent his first two college seasons at Indiana before playing the last two at Missouri, was one of about 20 players from the SEC who spoke to the Herald-Leader during Combine week.
The backgrounds of those players varied wildly. But the feedback was unanimous.
“Just being in that league — that’s like the grown man league,” said Collin Murray-Boyles, a possible 2025 lottery pick who played two seasons at South Carolina. “That’s the number one league in the country. So just playing there and going through that was probably the best thing to prepare me for the next level.”
From the can’t-miss, one-and-done stars to the multi-year players to the first-time transfers who worked their way up the draft boards, the SEC’s best were of one mind on what the league meant to their development, and there were common threads throughout the conversations.
“Definitely, the physicality from mid-major to high-major — I think that helped me learn that I need to come into every game ready for that,” said Grant Nelson, who started his college career at North Dakota State before playing two seasons at Alabama. “Especially me playing at the 5 a lot my first year at Alabama, I think that kind of taught me that.”
Johni Broome — a 6-foot-10, 240-pound post player — blossomed into a college star during his two seasons at Morehead State before hitting the transfer portal and ending up at Auburn, where he was a difference-maker in year one, evolving into the SEC player of the year as a super senior this past season.
“The transition to the SEC was very difficult,” Broome said. “Obviously, it’s a lot of strong, physical, athletic guys. So understanding that I had to get in the gym, I had to get in the weight room, I had to get faster, I had to get quicker, I had to get stronger — I think that was the biggest first jump.”
Facing all that length, strength and athleticism helped the little guys, too.
Alabama’s Mark Sears — the preseason SEC player of the year — spent two seasons at Ohio before coming to the SEC and starting all 111 games for the Crimson Tide over the past three years.
“Constantly seeing athletes all over the floor — that’s something that the SEC has over all the years I’ve been in there, but especially this year,” said Sears, a 6-1 guard. “I’m really used to just going against a lot of guys with that length and 5s that can guard the 1.
“You have to be more crafty. You have to use a lot of ball fakes and head fakes and just play with pace when you’re trying to score. So that really helped my game a lot.”
The SEC’s unprecedented season
That “especially this year” portion of Sears’ quote rings true.
This was the season that the SEC put a record-breaking 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament. (LSU and South Carolina were the only league members that didn’t make it.) Florida won the national title. Auburn advanced to the Final Four. Alabama and Tennessee were in the Elite Eight, and Arkansas, Kentucky and Ole Miss all made the Sweet 16.
“The SEC was the toughest league in America, and just to be able to go out and have that competition night in and night out — I think iron sharpens iron, so to be able to compete at a high level, I think that made my game grow in a different way,” said Oklahoma’s Jalon Moore, who was projected as a possible second-round pick before recently suffering a major injury.
Playing against the length, strength and athleticism certainly helps, but the fact that these players were doing it every time they stepped on the court was what separated the SEC in 2025 from any other conference, including past incarnations of this one.
“Playing with that physicality every single night — every team is a ranked team. And that was the beauty of the SEC is just you couldn’t take a night off,” said Georgia freshman Asa Newell, who’s No. 18 in ESPN’s latest mock draft. “You don’t have a team that you can say, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be easy.’”
Newell was a one-and-done newcomer to the conference. He came to college basketball from star-studded Montverde Academy, the top of the high school food chain. Four players on Montverde’s 2023-24 roster are projected as top 20 picks in Wednesday’s NBA draft, including surefire No. 1 selection Cooper Flagg.
Other SEC draft hopefuls had more humble entries to the league. Proving themselves in such an environment — and showing the NBA decision-makers that they could cut it at that level — played into their transfer portal reasoning.
“That was one of the biggest reasons I chose Tennessee, because I knew that the SEC was the closest conference to the NBA,” said the Vols’ Chaz Lanier, a four-year player at North Florida first. “In the SEC, you’re gonna see super big and athletic players. The game plans and the actions that the SEC teams run are NBA sets. So everything is just like the NBA. I feel like it’s gonna be a reward once I — hopefully, Lord willing — get to the NBA.”
Florida’s Alijah Martin, who played four seasons at FAU, concurred.
“You had a really good opponent every night. And it’s gonna be like that in the NBA,” he said. “Obviously, the turnaround is a little quicker, but the physicality is gonna be pretty much the same. That’s what the SEC brings.”
The latest ESPN mock draft has 11 SEC players projected to be selected this week — the draft starts Wednesday, with round two set for Thursday — and while that number leads all conferences, it doesn’t even tell the full story.
ESPN’s most recently updated Top 100 rankings for the 2025 draft feature a total of 28 SEC players, with 17 more from the league ranked outside of the 59-pick draft range but inside the top 100.
And this isn’t a case of a select few teams being responsible for most of the picks, like in the ACC, which has 10 projected draft selections, with five of them coming from Duke.
The SEC’s 11 projected picks come from nine different schools. Five are viewed as first-rounders, but none of those players will be from expected places like Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky or Tennessee.
Twelve SEC programs have at least one player in ESPN’s top 100.
Last year, the SEC had only four total NBA draft picks. Three of those were from Kentucky — Reed Sheppard, Rob Dillingham and Antonio Reeves — and the other was Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht, the SEC player of the year.
One of this year’s projected first-rounders is Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr., who played two seasons at Iona, emerged as a star for the Gators last year, then jumped another level this past season, ending up as an All-American and the Final Four Most Outstanding Player.
Clayton also talked up the league’s “elite-level athleticism and physicality” and how it helped shape his game, as well as preparing the SEC’s teams for NCAA Tournament success.
And Bates, who went from single-digit scorer at Indiana to under-the-radar Missouri transfer to possible NBA draft pick in two years, doesn’t think “NBA South” was a one-and-done deal.
“I mean, it’s the best league in the country,” he said. “And I’m sure it’ll be the same way this upcoming year.”
The SEC’s NBA outlook
Yes, the league is losing a ton of talent, as all of the aforementioned numbers indicate.
That talent pool includes lots of old guys, like Broome, Clayton and Sears, not to mention multi-year SEC stars such as Texas A&M’s Wade Taylor IV and Tennessee’s Zakai Zeigler, who are out of eligibility but absent from the draft lists.
Kentucky’s crew of draft hopefuls features five fifth-year players. Koby Brea and Amari Williams are both in ESPN’s latest mock draft, while Jaxson Robinson (65th), Lamont Butler (90th) and Andrew Carr (95th) are all on the Top 100 list.
There’s some youth leaving, too. Texas guard Tre Johnson is projected to go No. 5 overall, tops among SEC players, while Oklahoma’s Jeremiah Fears is listed at No. 7 by ESPN.
Those freshmen talked about the same things as the veterans: length, physicality, athleticism and the no-days-off nature of the SEC. All beneficial, they agreed.
But while mid-major transfers like Lanier acknowledged the confidence boost that came with succeeding in such an environment, the one-and-dones approached that topic differently.
“My confidence has always been sky high, even when I ain’t having the best game,” Johnson said with a wide grin.
That kind of swagger is worth something, too.
And the SEC should have a healthy mix of all of the ingredients that made it great again in 2026.
Missing from the list of projected 2025 picks are some familiar names.
Florida’s Alex Condon, Alabama’s Labaron Philon and Auburn’s Tahaad Pettiford were all viewed as possible first-rounders this year before eventually pulling out of the NBA draft to return to school for next season.
Arkansas guard Boogie Fland, another projected pick, opted out of the draft during Combine week and transferred to Florida. Kentucky’s Otega Oweh was on the path to being selected in the second round before he, too, withdrew from the 2025 draft in order to return to Lexington.
Other returnees like Thomas Haugh (Florida) and Karter Knox (Arkansas) have generated 2026 draft buzz. The league is packed with talented veterans transferring in. The next Clayton or Lanier could be in that group.
And the influx of youth into the conference could be immense.
UK transfer Jayden Quaintance — too young to be eligible for this year’s draft — is projected as a possible top-10 pick next year. Freshmen like Tennessee’s Nate Ament and the Arkansas duo of Darius Acuff and Meleek Thomas are viewed as potential first-rounders, too.
The resources that SEC schools have pumped into men’s basketball — from major coaching hires to facility upgrades to just plain bigger budgets — over the past decade or so is clearly a contributing factor here. The lure of NIL compensation is a major player, too.
A few of the projected 2025 draft picks who ultimately chose to return to SEC schools acknowledged at the Combine that getting paid seven figures in college certainly makes a difference.
So, while the SEC will be missing plenty of pro-level guys next season, plenty more will be ready to take their place within the league — a mix of NBA-ready returnees and five-star newcomers headlining what should be another star-studded season.
“Everyone called it the gauntlet,” Oweh said of this past season. “You know, we’re playing a Top 25 team every single night. I think it just always keeps you on your P’s and Q’s, because you can’t take a day off. And that’s something that’s big for the next level.
“You know, there’s guys that they’re bringing in every single day. They’re cutting guys. They’re adding guys to the roster. You’ve always got to stay sharp, always got to stay on point. So I feel like the SEC definitely … preps you for getting ready for that next level.”
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