The good news for Arkansas basketball is that it has a loaded roster. This is a very talented team with depth, balance and versatility. What you saw in The Bahamas was just a small taste of what is to come, especially in light of the reality that Miikka Muurinen, an elite prospect, was unable to play in the Baha Mar series because of procedural snags over eligibility (which are fully expected to be resolved for the regular season). The ceiling for this team goes beyond what you saw this past week. It’s much higher. This team is young and will only get smarter and more confident as the season goes along.
The bad news? The rest of the SEC, especially at the top, figures to be very, very strong.
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If you have been consistently reading our coverage of Arkansas hoops, you know our position on SEC basketball: 2026 was never going to match the impossibly high standard set by 2025. There was simply no way last season was going to come close to the best season in SEC basketball history, the majestic 2025 campaign in which the conference put the rest of college basketball at its feet with a national champion, two Final Four teams, four Elite Eight teams, and seven Sweet 16 teams within a 14-team NCAA Tournament haul. After the inevitable dip in 2026, the conference is poised to once again be a beast in 2027. We all know Florida, with its core players coming back, will be preseason No. 1 and the choice of many experts to win it all. However, two non-Florida, non-Arkansas teams are also in a lot of preseason top 10s: Texas and Tennessee.
ESPN’s Jeff Borzello has Arkansas in his preseason top 10, but he has Texas and Tennessee several spots above the Razorbacks:
“A road trip to Louisville for the SEC/ACC Challenge is one of Texas’ few elite-level early matchups. Two of the best bigs in the country will go head-to-head down low in Matas Vokietaitis and Flory Bidunga, while Isaiah Johnson will face another high-level point guard in Jackson Shelstad. It’s also a good chance to see how Sean Miller is utilizing Marcus Spears Jr. early,” Borzello wrote about Texas.
Borzello wrote this about the Vols:
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“It’s well-documented at this point that Rick Barnes has gone all-in on offense, after most of the Vols’ success in recent years was predicated upon defensive dominance. So how will the pivot translate on the court? Michigan State has had a top-15 defense in each of the past three seasons, and it has an elite point guard in Jeremy Fears Jr., making this one a stiff test at both ends of the floor.”
The SEC has four preseason top-10 teams. Arkansas is one – great! – but three others exist, including a prohibitive Final Four favorite down in Gainesville. Arkansas is loaded, but it will have a tough time in this season’s SEC.
