While in Destin, Fla., for the annual SEC Spring Meetings, Alabama men’s basketball coach Avery Johnson did some lobbying for his now-former point guard, Collin Sexton.

Sexton is projected to be a lottery pick in the 2018 NBA Draft in less than a month, which would make him the highest-drafted Crimson Tide player since Antonio McDyess was taken No. 2 overall by the Los Angeles Clippers in 1995. Johnson hopes Sexton isn’t far behind.

“I think it was a great experience for him,” Johnson said Wednesday. “Now, I think in some ways, if it was up to him, he’d love to come back to school because he had such a great experience, especially in the classroom. And I thought at the end of the year, he started to figure some more things out about defenses and being a leader on our team, and just when he was getting that point of going closer to a level one type of a player then it was over.

“But I think it was a great win-win for us, and if all goes well and, from what I’m hearing, he’s going to go somewhere in the top 10 -- hopefully he doesn’t make it past five or six, in a perfect world. But that’s great for Alabama to even be having these conversations. And we have some other guys that are showing up on some mock draft boards, and sure, I’d like to keep them. But I’m really excited that we had close to 200 NBA scouts in our building last year, and we an NBA pro day that had 50 scouts.

“Alabama’s starting to get in the conversation with some of the other blueblood schools of developing NBA players, and that’s helping us with our recruiting. And we want it to continue.”

Possible two-and-dones of the future are rising sophomores Herbert Jones and John Petty.

Both were featured in ESPN’s 2019 mock draft in February, and Jones has been a mainstay in the prediction pieces, most recently appearing in Sports Illustrated’s way-too-early mock.

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Sexton is the first one-and-done player during Johnson’s tenure. But the fourth-year coach is open to signing more players like that. Just maybe not on the level of another SEC school.

“Kentucky is Kentucky. I don’t think anybody in our conference is going to be able to do what they do,” Johnson said. “With us moving forward, we’d like to continue to recruit one-and-dones. I don’t need five, you know. Five freshmen was a lot last year, just by itself. But I like to sprinkle in some one-and-dones. … We want to be a balanced program, which includes maybe having a one-and-done potentially every year.

“But we like two-and-dones, and we may have one or two kids that fit that model, and I think if we can do that and get kids to embark on their senior year like Donta Hall and be in our program for four years and develop and now this year we’ll be a little bit older. I don’t want to be the fourth-youngest team in the country again. So, I think, for us, we want to have more of a balanced program.”

Although it’s not something that will be voted on in Destin, does Johnson think that rule will change?

“I think it’s something that (the NBA is) going to address at their next collective bargaining session,” Johnson said, “which I think is in two years.”

*** Jake Rowe of Dawgs247 contributed to this report.

Contact Charlie Potter by 247Sports' personal messaging or on Twitter (@Charlie_Potter).