It will NOT be an Active SEC Basketball Coaching Carousel

There were three clear tiers in SEC basketball this season, with Florida as the one outlier. In the very bottom tier, a cluster of programs were wrapped in the throes of mediocrity.

Ole Miss is a year removed from a Sweet 16. Chris Beard isn’t going anywhere. Auburn just promoted Steven Pearl. As bad as it may look for the Tigers, they just hired a new football coach. Finding money in the budget to make another major coaching hire probably isn’t in the cards.

That leaves us with three teams: South Carolina, Oklahoma, and LSU. The SEC Tournament isn’t over, and two of those programs have already decided to let their head coaches stick around for another year.

Prior to the start of the SEC Tournament, Lamont Paris got a vote of confidence from his athletic director, despite a 4-14 finish in conference play. Paris has a sub-.500 record during his time in Columbia, but a 26-8 campaign in 2024 bought him enough time. That season, the Gamecocks won 13 SEC games. Paris has 10 total SEC wins in his other three seasons.

“Gamecock Nation deserves a winning Men’s Basketball program,” athletic director Jeremiah Donati said in a school release. “I understand the frustration and disappointment following the results of the past two seasons. Coach Paris can win here and he has proven it. He has proven he can win throughout his coaching career.”

That 2024 year is doing a lot of work for Paris, but at least he has an NCAA Tournament appearance on his resume. Porter Moser took Oklahoma to the Big Dance last year in his fourth season. For most of the year, it looked like he might be a one-hit wonder. Then the Sooners rattled off eight wins over their final 11 games to be squarely on the bubble ahead of Selection Sunday.

New athletic director Roger Denny tells Pete Thamel that he’s bringing Moser back for the 2027 season and financially recommitting to the program. It would’ve been easy to move on, but Moser has Final Four experience, something the new AD believes can be replicated in Norman.

“Porter Moser’s return was up in the air a couple of weeks ago, per sources, but the combination of a strong finish and a lackluster candidate pool resulted in new AD Roger Denny bringing Moser back for next season,” reports Jeff Goodman.

That leaves us with LSU, the No. 16 seed at this year’s SEC Tournament. New athletic director Verge Ausberry essentially said in January that Matt McMahon would get a pink slip if the Tigers didn’t make the NCAA Tournament. That hasn’t happened yet, but he also still has his job. That may change in the next 48 hours, and it may be the only head coaching change for the SEC this offseason.