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SEC preseason media poll and all-SEC team announced

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The SEC released their preseason media poll on Tuesday, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Kentucky and Florida found themselves at the top of that list.

Before I get into the meat of it, here’s the poll in its entirety:

1. Kentucky
2. Florida
3. Arkansas
4. LSU
5. Georgia
6. Ole Miss
7. Missouri
8. Auburn
9. Texas A&M
10. Alabama
11. Vanderbilt
12. South Carolina
13. Tennessee
14. Mississippi State

Everything after the top two is a crapshoot. That much we all can agree on. But I think the SEC media voters did get it right putting Arkansas and LSU at third and fourth. I’m a little higher on Missouri than other people are, and I think that Bruce Pearl and Donnie Tyndall will have some unexpected success off the bat, but I can’t really argue too much with any other pick.

What’s more interesting, however, is who the media picked as the preseason all-SEC first-team:

Jarvis Summers, Ole Miss
Aaron Harrison, Kentucky
Michael Frazier, Florida
Jordan Mickey, LSU
Bobby Portis, Arkansas

And the second team:

Charles Mann, Georgia
Willie Cauley-Stein, Kentucky
Andrew Harrison, Kentucky
Alex Poythress, Kentucky
Karl-Anthony Towns, Kentucky

Harrison was named the Preseason Player of the Year.

Here’s my question: No Karl-Anthony Towns on this list? Just one player from Kentucky makes the cut? I get it, I guess, because the platoon that John Calipari keeps talking about will likely limit some of the production from guys on that roster.

But does that mean those guys are better?

With all due respect to Mickey and Portis, if you gave me a choice, I’d take Towns over either of those two. In fact, Towns would be the first player that I would take in the SEC. He’s my Preseason Player of the Year, so it’s hard for me to get on board with him getting left out of the first team entirely.

Follow @robdauster