Ole Miss' Moody, Mississippi State's Sword and Newman named All-SEC

Three standouts from Mississippi schools highlight the 12th annual men's basketball coaches preseason All-SEC first and second teams, which were released Thursday.

Ole Miss senior guard Stefan Moody landed a spot on the first team, with Mississippi State senior Craig Sword and super freshman Malik Newman on the second team.

Moody is coming off of a season in which he led the SEC in scoring in conference games at an 18.6 ppg clip. He also led the league in steals, averaging two a game.

For Sword, a senior from Montgomery, Ala., who led the Bulldogs in scoring a year ago (11.3 points), it's the third time he's been recognized.

His first year at MSU, he was tabbed to the SEC All-Freshman team before being named second-team All-SEC this past March.

"It's always nice to be recognized," said the 6-foot-3 Sword, who became the 34th player in school history last season to reach 1,000-career points. "The credit goes to my teammates and coaches. They put me in position to have success."

Newman, a freshman from Jackson, was voted second-team All-SEC in October by the Associated Press after a stellar high school career at Callaway that ended with four state championships and McDonald's All-American honors.

"It's such an honor," he said. "There's a lot of great names on that list, and I look forward to competing against them this year. It's going to be a lot of fun."

Nine different schools are represented on the two teams with Kentucky having four selections while Georgia, LSU, Mississippi State, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt have two selections each. In all, 37 different players received votes for the coaches' teams.

The coaches' preseason All-SEC first and second teams consist of a minimum of eight players on each squad, voted on by the SEC Head Men's Basketball Coaches. No ties were broken and no predicted order of finish was made.

All 14 SEC teams officially tip-off the 2015-16 campaign this weekend, beginning with 13 teams hitting the court Friday night. Conference play is set to begin on January 2 and the 2016 SEC Tournament will be March 9-13 at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn.

This story was originally published November 12, 2015 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Ole Miss' Moody, Mississippi State's Sword and Newman named All-SEC ."