Cloninger: Looking at the preseason All-SEC vote
The preseason media SEC ballot was released Tuesday and the voters predicted that South Carolina would repeat as SEC regular-season champion. They also selected reigning SEC Player of the Year Tiffany Mitchell as the preseason player of the year, with the other votes going to teammate Aleighsa Welch and Tennessee’s Isabelle Harrison.
The entire poll can be found here.
The results fell right in line what I think they should have been. Although many of the voters, made up of SEC and national media, could have automatically inked in Tennessee as preseason champ, the Gamecocks only lost one bench player and one walk-on from a championship team, and they added the No. 2 national recruiting class. They should have been picked to win.
Here’s my ballot:
1. South Carolina
2. Tennessee
3. Texas A&M
4. Kentucky
5. Georgia
6. LSU
7. Mississippi State
8. Florida
9. Vanderbilt
10. Auburn
11. Alabama
12. Missouri
13. Arkansas
14. Ole Miss
All-SEC Team
Tiffany Mitchell, South Carolina
Aleighsa Welch, South Carolina
Martha Alwal, Mississippi State
Isabelle Harrison, Tennessee
Courtney Walker, Texas A&M
SEC Player of the Year
Aleighsa Welch, South Carolina
The all-conference team first:
We were only allowed to vote for five players. That made it tough to leave off a Bria Goss or Jennifer O’Neill from Kentucky, and the other Courtney from Texas A&M (Williams) and Bashaara Graves from Tennessee. I felt that Harrison and Walker were no-brainers, as well as Mitchell, and Alwal has been a dominant force for Mississippi State as it’s climbed to respectability. She’s going to have a great senior season for a team that added some big-time recruits to a 22-win WNIT team.
Why two Gamecocks on the first team? They each made the first team last year, and Mitchell as returning player of the year made her a natural selection. So why Welch as POY?
I voted Welch as SEC Player of the Year last year. Mitchell had a wonderful season, and put up more points per game than Welch, but Welch had a lot to do with that. Early in the year, as Mitchell was stepping into an increased role due to Ieasia Walker and Ashley Bruner graduating, Dawn Staley wanted Mitchell to shed her role in the system and become a leading scorer. As part of that, Welch gave up a lot of points she could have had to make the extra pass, trying to find Mitchell to give her some easy looks.
No question that Mitchell is an enormous part of USC’s team, but Welch is its heart and soul. Staley’s first home-grown recruit, Welch is the player that can equally impact the game on both ends. That’s why I picked her last year, and why I picked her as preseason player of the year this year. The preseason pick must be a part of the preseason team by the ballot’s rules, and I couldn’t leave Mitchell off after she won the prize for which I voted Welch last year.
The predicted finish:
USC, Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas A&M are the best four teams in the league, and take your pick which one you think will finish first. USC is the reigning champ, and only got better from a team that wasn’t supposed to be as good as it was last year. The Lady Vols return all but Meighan Simmons (a big loss) but are still a team that reached the Sweet 16 and played its best basketball at the end of the season. Kentucky and A&M each lost some talent but are the kinds of powers that reload every year.
The next group is a jumble, with teams that could challenge for that top-four finish and a two-game bye in the SEC tournament. Georgia is going to be Georgia, but I don’t know how good it can be after last season, when its offense was one of the worst in Andy Landers’ historic tenure. LSU lost three starters, including the dead-eye Theresa Plaisance, but Nikki Caldwell has a very strong program.
Mississippi State could be the surprise of the league. It finished very well with a deep WNIT run and then signed Parade All-American Victoria Vivians among the country’s No. 20 recruiting class. Florida, after holding a depleted roster together, signed the No. 12 class and Vanderbilt took the 16th, although losing senior guards Christina Foggie and Jasmine Lister is a significant blow.
Auburn’s a strong team, tough to beat at home, and the Tigers do have a lot of returning talent. The problem is they lost Tyrese Tanner, who scored 17 points per game last year, and the next-highest scorer had 11.4.
The bottom four are teams that are simply hoping to get through the season. Alabama was a surprising squad last year, finishing 7-9 after a decade of paying rent in the league’s basement. First-year coach Kristy Curry won three more SEC games than predecessor Wendell Hudson did in his final two years but she lost Shafontaye Myers and Daisha Simmons.
Missouri has 3-point specialist Morgan Eye returning but not much around her, although playing in Columbia is a hard sell. Arkansas fired Tom Collen because he couldn’t get the Razorbacks to the NCAA tournament and hired Jimmy Dykes, an Arkansas grad who has coached men’s college basketball before, but has never coached women and hasn’t done any coaching in 23 years. He’s been an NBA scout and a TV analyst since leaving Oklahoma State in 1991. Hard to think he’s going to pull any miracles.
Ole Miss is still facing the specter of NCAA investigation and lost Valencia McFarland, a magnificent player on a lousy team. While I think Matt Insell will become an excellent coach (he learned under Matthew Mitchell at Kentucky), he’s shackled by potential recruits knowing that whatever immediate success the Rebels may have may be taken away once the probe has concluded. Very hard to get any high-profile players to look Ole Miss’ way.
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