By Harry King

LITTLE ROCK — Southeastern Conference basketball coaches spent much of a summer teleconference talking about how the league will be better. Typical of coaches, they avoided specifics.

Without risk, they could have promised that a quartet of unwanted zeroes will be a one-year anomaly. The 2009 blanks:

• No SEC team in the third round of the NCAA Tournament.
• No SEC team in the Top 20 of the final Associated Press poll.
• No player among the first 40 selected in the NBA draft.
• No player on the first two teams of College Hoops.net Freshman All-American team.

Guaranteed, SEC teams will be represented in the first two categories and league players will be in the latter two categories.

Although much of the predicted success is attached to the coattails of new Kentucky coach John Calipari, other teams — particularly Mississippi State — should make waves nationally.

For starters, the SEC only had three teams in the NCAA Tournament in March and LSU was the highest seed at eight. Mississippi State was a 13 seed and probably would have been excluded if not for winning the SEC Tournament.

Only LSU survived the first round and the Tigers lost by 14 to North Carolina in the second round. From 1990 until this year, the SEC had at least four teams in the NCAA Tournament and one or more reached the Sweet Sixteen for 17 straight years.

In the final AP poll, taken prior to the NCAA Tournament, LSU was the highest ranked SEC team at No. 21. A year earlier, Tennessee was No. 5 in the poll and Vanderbilt was No.
18.

In the recent NBA draft, SEC players were passed over until Milwaukee took Jodie Meeks of Kentucky with the 41st pick. A year earlier, Arkansas’ Sonny Weems was No. 39. Anthony Rudolph of LSU and Marreese Speights of Florida went in the first round.

Xs and Os are part of basketball, but skilled players are essential and projections about the 2010 NBA draft indicate the SEC will have a goodly parcel of stars.

Guard John Wall, supposedly the No. 1 player out of high school, will be a freshman at Kentucky and one mock draft says he will be the first player taken next June. With Calipari, one-year players will be common. So will powerhouse teams in Lexington.

Wall’s Kentucky teammates, high school power forward DeMarcus Cousins and junior-to-be Patrick Patterson, are among five other SEC players penciled in for the first round.

Projected in the lower half of the first round are Jarvis Varnado of Mississippi State, Michael Washington of Arkansas and Tyler Smith of Tennessee. A.J. Ogilvy of Vanderbilt, Tasmin Mitchell of LSU and J.P. Prince of Tennessee show up in the second round.

Both Wall and Cousins figure to be on the Freshman All-American team. They could be joined by Renardo Sidney, a 6-foot-10, 260-pound power forward who originally committed to Southern Cal and then signed with Mississippi State.

Sidney’s status is up in the air, pending an NCAA investigation of whether Sidney’s family received improper benefits while he was living in Los Angeles. Sidney’s attorney says his client is prepared to enroll at MSU for the summer session that begins this month.

With Sidney, Varnado and guard Dee Bost, MSU would be expected to join Kentucky in the Sweet Sixteen. Even without him, the Bulldogs might be favored in the Western Division.

Either way, SEC basketball will be improved this year.

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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.