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The SEC has seriously upgraded its coaching talent.

In 2013, SEC commissioner Mike Slive had a message for his 14 athletic directors: Basketball had to become a bigger priority, immediately.

Slive had overseen the conference's incredible seven-year football national championship run, but the New York native was a man with serious basketball roots. As a former chairman of the NCAA Tournament selection committee, he was sick of seeing too many of his conference schools miss out on March Madness.

That year, only three SEC schools earned bids to the NCAA tournament. Slive knew changes were needed.

"Our commissioner was pretty straightforward that we needed to, and could, do better in basketball," says Vanderbilt athletic director David Williams. "We as ADs had to come together and say 'Yeah, we could and we should so let's all sort of put egos aside for the betterment of trying to make basketball better.'"

Slive made his own move to rectify the situation by hiring Mark Whitworth as the SEC's basketball czar and Greg Shaheen, the former head of the NCAA tournament, as a scheduling consultant. Their charge: Help conference schools schedule smarter because the league's RPI and other metrics were only as strong as the weakest link.

But that was only one component of the problems plaguing SEC basketball. There were numerous theories that sought to explain the conference's struggles in basketball, including the dearth of homegrown basketball talent and the fact that football overshadowed the sport.

The most popular explanation, however, focused on bad coaching hires.

"Coaching mistakes have really haunted this league," says Paul Finebaum, a radio and television personality at ESPN. "After Kentucky and Florida, I've always thought Arkansas had the strongest fanbase, but Arkansas made a series of mistakes before Mike Anderson that prevented them from moving forward. Missouri, the school we all thought would be the basketball power, has made mistakes."

Says Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin: "I think it's hiring the right coach and for whatever reason in men's basketball we haven't been as successful doing that as we have in our other sports."

Not any more. In the the last two weeks, the conference has added some serious coaching star power.

Mississippi State was first out of the gate when it nabbed former UCLA head coach Ben Howland. Howland, who guided the Bruins to three Final Fours, takes over a program that went 37-60 in the last three years.

After an NCAA snafu with first-year coach Donnie Tyndall forced a coaching change, Tennessee quickly went out and got former Texas coach Rick Barnes. In his 16 years at Texas, Barnes missed the NCAA tournament only once.

This week, Alabama signed a former NBA Coach of the Year, Avery Johnson, to replace Anthony Grant. Johnson has no college coaching experience, but the ESPN NBA analyst has the personality, track record and drive to be very successful in the SEC.

Each of those hires comes a year after Auburn added a true marquee headliner in Bruce Pearl, who replaced Tony Barbee.

All told, the quartet represents a seismic change in the SEC's coaching pedigree.

The four brand name coaches join a group that already includes Kentucky's John Calipari and Florida's Billy Donovan. Other SEC coaches -- Ole Miss' Andy Kennedy, Arkansas' Mike Anderson and South Carolina's Frank Martin, among others -- all have NCAA tournament success on their resumes.

Finebaum believes it's the best roster of coaches, from a pedigree standpoint, in SEC history.

The Pearl effect

Jay Jacobs only cared about one thing: Winning.

So when it came time to replace Barbee, who went 49-75 in four seasons on the Plains, the Auburn athletic director quickly targeted Pearl. Using a sparkling $92.5 million basketball arena as part of his pitch, Jacobs convinced Pearl to leave ESPN for a school that wasn't a traditional basketball powerhouse.

While Pearl had his warts -- he was still serving an NCAA show-cause penalty at the time of the hire -- he was the big coaching name on the market that fanbases craved. He already proven he could win in the SEC when he guided Tennessee to six consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, which included two Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight appearance.

In hiring Pearl, Auburn sent a strong message to all of its SEC counterparts: Your move.

"The last couple of years there has been an emphasis on winning in the SEC; the commissioner made it clear that we haven't been as good as we could be," Jacobs says. "I took that personally and I went out and hired the best coach I could."

Jacobs believes the Pearl hire "set the tone for other schools" and "everybody upped their game" as a result.

Pearl didn't guide the Tigers to the NCAA tournament this season, but he energized the fanbase, sold tickets and built momentum heading into next season with a run in the 2015 SEC tournament. Making it to the SEC semifinals, in fact, may have ratcheted up pressure on Alabama athletic director Bill Battle to finally fire Grant, especially after deciding to keep him last year when Pearl was available.

"Alabama fans were intrigued by Pearl, but Battle, for whatever reason, decided not to go that way," Finebaum says. "It turned out to be a mistake."

Hiring a well-known coach in no way guarantees success -- former NBA coach Eddie Jordan, for instance, hasn't miraculously turned around a moribund Rutgers program -- but it can "make a difference in ticket sales and interest in your program from a recruiting standpoint," says Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity.

Mississippi State hasn't started selling basketball season tickets, but Stricklin has noticed an uptick in enthusiasm from fans from the Howland hire and expects that to be reflected in ticket sales.

The impact of football

Football has been a double-edged sword for SEC basketball. With the exception of Kentucky, football rules the day in the SEC. It is the primary source of revenue for athletic departments, dominates the conversation and headlines, brings together strangers and divides families.

In fact, the emphasis on football in the south has been blamed for deterring some basketball coaches from accepting SEC jobs. When Gregg Marshall was considering leaving Wichita State for Alabama, some questioned why he'd accept a job where Nick Saban and football overshadows, well, everything.

"I think our dominance in football sometimes makes it less attractive for great coaches and great basketball players to come to the Southeastern Conference," Jacobs admits.

Finebaum believes the football season stretching further and further into January -- this year's national championship game was played on Jan. 12 -- followed by the last frenzied weeks of football recruiting and National Signing Day prevents potential SEC basketball fans from focusing on the sport until February.

"I've covered this league for over 30 years and basketball was always important and football was the king," Finebaum says," but football in the last 10 years has become even larger than it's ever been before."

One positive for basketball: The success of football has allowed schools to improve facilities and hire expensive coaches. In 2010, Auburn opened its basketball arena, LSU built a $15 million basketball practice facility and Georgia spent $13 million in arena renovations. Ole Miss will unveil its new $85 million arena this December.

MSU, Tennessee and Alabama will all pay their new coaches more than $2 million annually -- a good chunk more than their previous coaches.

Barnes, who has coached at both "basketball-only" and "football schools" during his career, acknowledged the value of football during his introductory press conference in Knoxville.

Said Barnes: "And I promise you, you want football...football is a major asset to helping us build the basketball program."