By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

If any SEC program had a winning basketball team, excluding Kentucky and Florida, would their fan base even care?

Actually, if they were winning the fan base would probably get behind them. I guess the better question is: If any SEC basketball program were a smidge better than mediocre, would anyone truly pay attention?

I ask this because for the most part SEC fans will alter their weekend schedule depending on what time their football team plays, but will really only watch basketball if the alternative is “Once Upon A Time” and even then it may come down to whether or not the latter is a rerun.

It’s kind of shame to be honest, because over the last few seasons the level of talent and competition within the conference has continued to grow.

One of the reasons for this semi-resurgence has been coaching. While football has taken a hit over the last couple seasons, relative to where it was because of missing out on some coaching hires at high profile programs, basketball has seemingly done a much better job with who they have brought in.

Take Tennessee for example and their hiring of Rick Barnes; who after prior stops at Clemson and Texas must have a wardrobe made up completely of different shades of orange.

Even though it feels as if Barnes bases his diagramming of plays and clock management off of NBA 2K18, he does a good job of recruiting and at least gets his teams into the tournament.

Avery Johnson is looking to be the correct hire at Alabama and even though Florida is off to a less than desired start, I don’t think anyone is questioning their choice of Mike White.

Throw in proven coaches like Ben Homeland, Bruce Pearl, and Frank Martin (coming off an unexpected Final Four 4 last year) and you can see why teams have started to close the gap with Kentucky, which a few years ago seemed insurmountable.

That being said, no one coach personifies SEC Basketball more than Georgia head coach, Mark Fox.

Fox is currently in his 9th season as the Bulldogs coach, and entered this season with an overall record of 145-118 (.551), 70-68 (.507) in conference play and zero tournament wins in their only two appearances in eight years. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be much rumbling about his job security, at least not with any regularity.

Personally, I think this is for 3 reasons:

1. Fox is the anti Jim Harrick. Basically, he’s a genuinely good guy that runs a clean program, and won’t embarrass the entire athletic department and university.
2. Even though Fox hasn’t had all that much success in Athens, he hasn’t been an object failure, either. If Georgia were to let him go, would they really be able to bring in someone better? He’s more less become the Ryan Tannehill of college basketball coaches.
3. He wasn’t that big of a name when Georgia initially hired him, so what Fox has been able to accomplish is fairly realistic to the expectations coming in. Bigger name, bigger expectations.

My point is, when you’re sitting on your couch, or laying bed, trying to decide if you should watch yet another episode of “Duck Dynasty” or something a little different, give SEC Basketball a try.

They’re still a work in progress, but it will be well worth your time. I mean, at the very least you’re guaranteed to see Barnes make a fool of himself, which is well worth the price of admission.