Otega Oweh’s biggest obstacles to an award-winning final season at Kentucky
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Otega Oweh returns as a top SEC player on a deep and balanced Kentucky roster.
- Florida's standout trio could block Oweh, with team success likely influencing votes.
- No SEC preseason favorite has won player of the year since 2019, dimming Oweh’s odds.
A little more than a month from now, the ballots will be counted and an SEC men’s basketball preseason player of the year will be named.
There’s a good chance that player will be Kentucky’s Otega Oweh.
The leading scorer from Mark Pope’s first UK team is back for his senior year, and an exodus of recent stars from the league should make for a wide-open race for top player honors during the 2025-26 season. That’ll get sorted out once the games begin.
When selecting the players most deserving of preseason honors, however, past success is paramount. Oweh doesn’t have much company in that conversation.
All five of the first-team all-SEC selections from last season — led by 2025 player of the year Johni Broome — are gone. And Oweh will be one of only two second-team picks returning for another run in the conference.
There will still be plenty of talent all around the SEC this season, for sure, but Oweh’s status as an established standout on what is expected to be one of the league’s best teams puts him right in the thick of the preseason player of the year debate this fall.
All that other talent in the league will ensure that earning the actual SEC player of the year award in March won’t be an easy task. And the past is an indication that predicting who the league’s best performer will be is quite difficult, too.
No SEC preseason player of the year pick has gone on to win the actual award since Tennessee’s Grant Williams in the 2018-19 season, and Georgia’s Yante Maten, who achieved the same thing the previous year, is the only other player to pull off that feat since UK’s Ron Mercer did it way back in 1997.
That’s not a great track record for reporters covering the league; their latest SEC preseason player of the year selection will be revealed during the conference’s media day festivities the week of Oct. 13.
If Oweh is indeed the pick, here’s an early look at the players who could block him from earning the real honor in March.
Someone at Florida
Apologies for starting this list with a bit of a cop out, but Todd Golden’s roster is stacked, and the reigning NCAA champions are the preseason favorites to win the league in 2026.
Team success often leads to individual accolades.
Over the past 10 seasons, someone from the regular-season champion has won at least a share of SEC player of the year honors eight times. The only exceptions in that span were UK’s Oscar Tshiebwe (the national player of the year in 2021-22) and Tennessee’s Grant Williams in 2018-19. In those cases, UK and Tennessee finished second in the SEC standings.
So, if Golden’s Gators win the league title this season, who’s most likely to earn the top individual trophy?
Alex Condon is the safest choice. He averaged 10.6 points and 7.5 rebounds per game as a sophomore last season before pulling out of the NBA draft — where he was projected as a possible first-rounder — to return to Florida.
An ESPN rundown of possible award winners from each team in its preseason Top 25 rankings earlier this week pegged Thomas Haugh as the most likely Gator to end up with postseason hardware. He averaged 9.8 points and 6.1 rebounds as a sophomore last season, ending things off with some loud games in the NCAA Tournament. A high-upside pick, for sure.
And speaking of potential for a breakout, don’t forget about Boogie Fland. The former UK recruit, who followed John Calipari to Arkansas, looked like a budding star as a freshman before an injury basically ended his season in mid-January. He entered the NBA draft (expected) and the transfer portal (unexpected), then pulled out of the draft (also unexpected) before transferring within the league to Florida.
The Gators — No. 2 nationally in ESPN’s latest rankings — will be picked to win the SEC, and it shouldn’t be a surprise if any of these three players ends up with the conference’s top individual honor. Throw in transfer guard Xaivian Lee and returning big man Rueben Chinyelu, and Golden might just have the best starting five in the country to begin the season.
Labaron Philon
Alex Condon and Boogie Fland were two prominent NBA draft dropouts this summer.
But the biggest in the SEC might have been Alabama’s Labaron Philon, who excelled as a freshman while sharing the court with such established veterans as Mark Sears, Grant Nelson and Clifford Omoruyi, among others.
All three of those guys are gone, and while Bama should still be an SEC title threat with the return of fellow guard Aden Holloway and some quality transfer portal pickups, this has the potential to turn into Philon’s team.
In 24.7 minutes per game last season, the 6-4 guard averaged 10.6 points, 3.3 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.4 steals. UK fans who stuck around for the whole thing will surely remember his 21-point performance in a beatdown of the Cats during the SEC Tournament, and he was one of the few bright spots in the Tide’s season-ending loss to Duke in the Elite Eight.
Nate Oats’ team will play fast and score a lot of points. That’s a good recipe for its top performer to be in the player of the year discussion. Philon is also capable of great things on the defensive end. And Kentucky will see him again in its SEC opener Jan. 3 in Tuscaloosa.
Tahaad Pettiford
Along with Philon, the only other player from last season’s SEC all-freshman team to return for year two will be Auburn guard Tahaad Pettiford, who also made a somewhat surprising decision to pull out of the NBA draft and come back to college.
While Philon has a clear path to stardom this season, Pettiford’s is even more wide open.
Bruce Pearl has lost all five starters from his 2025 Final Four team. In fact, Pettiford will be Auburn’s only returnee from last season’s roster.
That doesn’t mean the Tigers will be bad. Pearl has once again assembled an SEC contender, with a top-10 transfer class nationally and some intriguing recruits from the high school ranks.
Pettiford, who turned 20 years old last month, should be ready to lead this group and step into the spotlight ceded by Broome and the rest of the program’s departures. He’s an exciting, electric guard who averaged 11.6 points in 22.9 minutes per game and managed to hit 70 3-pointers (at a 36.6% rate) as a role player.
He led the Tigers in scoring in an NCAA Tournament win over Creighton, dropped 20 points in a Sweet 16 victory over Michigan and gave UK fits in a 21-point performance in Rupp Arena.
Imagine what he’ll do when Pearl turns him loose this season.
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Josh Hubbard
Joining Oweh as the only returnee from last season’s all-SEC second team will be Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard, who led the Bulldogs with 18.9 points per game as a sophomore and was second overall in league scoring (behind NBA lottery pick Tre Johnson).
Hubbard, who also led Mississippi State in scoring as a freshman, is likely to shoulder even more of the load this time around for Chris Jans’ team, which lost every other starter from last season and is likely to be projected around the middle of the pack in the league standings.
A 5-11 guard who can put up a flurry of points at any given time — and from just about anywhere on the court — Hubbard might be the best bet to lead the SEC in scoring this season. But while Mississippi State should still be good — the Dogs are an 8 seed in the preseason ESPN Bracketology projections — Hubbard’s shot at SEC player of the year honors will suffer if his team is mid-tier in the conference.
Still, if he leads the league in scoring, he’ll be under consideration for this honor. And his name value and track record in the SEC might make him Oweh’s biggest competition for the preseason player of the year designation.
Ja’Kobi Gillespie
It’s highly unlikely that a newcomer to the league will be named SEC preseason player of the year — that hasn’t happened since highly touted Florida transfer Kerry Blackshear Jr. was the recipient six years ago — but the real award is all about results, and Tennessee’s Ja’Kobi Gillespie should be in a prime spot to provide them.
Gillespie was a standout for a very good Maryland team last season, averaging 14.7 points, 4.8 assists (to just 1.9 turnovers) and 1.9 steals per game while making 87 3-pointers at a 40.7% rate. After a star turn at Belmont, his brief time as a Terrapin proved his ability to make the transition to high-major basketball.
247Sports ranked Gillespie as the No. 12 transfer in the portal this offseason, placing him third among incoming SEC players, behind only Boogie Fland and UK’s Jayden Quaintance, who is still recovering from major knee surgery.
So, he’s got plenty of talent, with past results to back it up. And while Rick Barnes lost a ton from last season’s Elite Eight squad — Chaz Lanier, Zakai Zeigler, Jordan Gainey, Igor Milicic Jr. and Jahmai Mashack among those departures — the Vols should have another preseason Top 25 team.
Gillespie will go into this season as Tennessee’s most-established college performer by a wide margin. He should be in the thick of this race, even if there’s a chance that someone from his own team turns out to be a better player by the end of the 2025-26 campaign …
A star SEC recruit
Yes, college basketball at the highest level has generally been trending toward older stars. And, no, the SEC hasn’t had many freshmen named its top player in recent years. Alabama’s Brandon Miller (2022-23) is the only one to earn SEC player of the year honors from the coaches and media since Anthony Davis did it in 2012.
But the conference has an intriguing haul of college basketball newcomers this season.
Tennessee’s Nate Ament — a former UK target — appears to be the most likely freshman to make major noise in the awards race. The 6-10 forward was a top-five recruit in the 2025 class and boasts all-over-the-floor range with considerable upside. ESPN has placed him in the conversation for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NBA draft. He’ll play a huge role for the Vols this season.
Calipari, unsurprisingly, has another star-studded group of newcomers, and his Razorbacks will be picked to finish toward the top of the SEC standings. Look for 6-2 point guard Darius Acuff — the No. 5 recruit in the 247Sports rankings and another projected lottery pick — to be given the keys to Calipari’s scoring attack.
Ament and Acuff are going to be the early frontrunners for SEC freshman of the year honors. It’s not a stretch to picture either of them in the overall player of the year race.
UK basketball teammates
This would obviously be a welcome problem for Mark Pope and Otega Oweh, but one major obstacle to the latter winning SEC player of the year honors in March could be those closest to him.
While Florida is the preseason favorite with arguably the most formidable starting five, Kentucky might very well have the deepest roster in the league. Incoming transfers Jaland Lowe and Mouhamed Dioubate could be all-SEC-type players. Jayden Quaintance would be firmly in the SEC player of the year picture if not for his injury status (and he might leap into that discussion with a return to the court fairly early in the season).
And Pope’s roster will feature guys like Denzel Aberdeen, Jasper Johnson, Kam Williams, Collin Chandler, Brandon Garrison, Andrija Jelavic (and more) beyond that. It would be a pretty big surprise if any from that group contended for SEC player of the year honors this season, but all are projected to play meaningful roles for Pope’s team, bringing a balanced attack that could cut into Oweh’s numbers.
For that reason, Oweh might have trouble matching his overall scoring production from last season — 16.2 points per game — even if he becomes a more efficient and effective offensive player. It’s worth noting that defensive wizard Herb Jones has been the only media pick for SEC player of the year honors in the past decade to average fewer than 17 points per game.
Of course, Oweh is a gifted defender, too, and that skill set combined with his expected offensive excellence should make him a prime candidate for top player honors in March.
Whatever his final stat line says, Oweh’s candidacy will be boosted considerably if Kentucky can win the SEC, something the Cats haven’t done since the 2019-20 season. In a league stacked with talent, that’s probably his clearest path to being named the SEC’s top player in the end.
