Texas' Sean Miller: Expired COVID year to hurt veteran depth - ESPN

DESTIN, Fla. — In the wake of a historic men's basketball season that saw the conference land a record 14 teams in the NCAA tournament and Florida win the national championship, the SEC is looking to repeat history.

One interesting headwind for the SEC and other top conferences for 2025-26 was mentioned at the league meetings this week, and it's a looming factor hovering over the next men's basketball season.

When asked about the SEC's quest to replicate history, first-year Texas coach Sean Miller pointed out that the latest numbers in the NCAA transfer portal essentially show «25 percent of the pie missing» in terms of quality veteran players because of the reduction of players with an extra year of eligibility from the COVID-19 eligibility rules.

He said that as «wild» as everyone considered this men's basketball portal to set up 2025-26, there was a missing notion.

«One thing that's definitely going to change, and I don't think it's talked a lot about in basketball, is the no COVID year,» Miller said. «In our case, we had a number of players in my three years at Xavier that were exercising their fifth year. It's a year that doesn't exist right now.»

He said this probably will end up hurting the power conferences with the most to spend, as there's simply less veteran, high-end talent available.

«I think just that alone, taking that one layer of talent, where you can convince an All-SEC player to return for a fifth year, and now that that's not in play, I don't think our league will remain as old,» Miller said. «So I think just with that alone, I don't know if 14 of 16 [bids], I hope, but I can certainly see the effect of that moving forward.

»Even in the Final Four, when you looked hard closely at Auburn and Florida,