HOOVER — One at a time.

That was C.M. Newton’s philosophy on starting freshmen in his 12 years coaching the Alabama basketball program from 1968-80.

Oh, how things have changed. They’re coming in bundles these days.

Of the four SEC teams ranked in the coaches top 25, only seventh-ranked Vanderbilt returns five starters. Kentucky (No. 2) and Florida (No. 10) each have two back while No. 17 Alabama has three.

That means new blood must make an impact immediately.

Wildcat coach John Calipari is in his third year of losing top talent to the NBA and replacing them with McDonald’s All-Americans. He joked about his fellow coaches who voted his team so high in the preseason.

“They’re trying to put pressure on us, man,” he said at Thursday’s SEC media day in Hoover. “They’re out of their mind. I think Vandy and Florida are really, really good teams. They will be hard games to win with four freshmen.”

The Crimson Tide faces a relatively similar situation with starters Charvez Davis and Chris Hines graduating and a celebrated freshman class entering. Top-30 recruits Trevor Lacey and Levi Randolph have two weeks of practice and two more before opening the season Nov. 11 with North Florida.

Molding the old with the new is the hardest part, but Alabama coach Anthony Grant said the chemistry between factions is strong. Having “willing learners” among the new guys makes that easier.

“They come in with humble spirit and they understand the expectation is to work hard every day and they are very coachable,” Grant said. “And they’re doing a great job of taking advantage of the experience our older guys have and understanding they have an opportunity to be helped by those guys.”

JaMychal Green once was the young star recruit who had to learn he wasn’t the only big man on campus when arriving at Alabama. Now the only senior on the roster, he’s taking a prime role leading the youngsters down the path to maturity.

“Coming in, it’s hard to be a role player when you’ve been that go-to guy, but I think everybody’s done a good job. We’re just a talented team, so we know everybody can play. We don’t have no egos, so ego isn’t problem for us.”

Grant recently called the team into a meeting where he went down the line identifying the role for each player. After a slow first week of practice, Green said the group had its best practice Monday when the defense-first mentality was fully embraced by the entire team.

Having a senior-heavy team like Vanderbilt makes role identification much easier, Calipari said. A recent visit to a Wildcat practice from an NBA coaching staff drove that point home. The same group just watched the Commodores and came away impressed.

“They all do what they’re supposed to do,” Calipari said he was told. “Right now, they could play games. And they looked at my team. ‘You could not.’”

It’s not as simple as throwing a senior-laden lineup on the floor and piling up wins, Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said.

He’s seen both sides of the issue.

“You could have a senior that maybe knows he’s not going to play in the NBA, so you could have a guy check out on you because now he’s thinking about ‘where I’m going to be working next year,’” Stallings said. “I have absolutely no concerns about any of the negativity of having a lot of seniors. And trust me, there can be negatives to having a lot of seniors.”

And there are certainly drawbacks to sending a roster full of newcomers into competition.

Alabama won’t be as reliant on the freshman as Kentucky with the top three scorers in Green, Trevor Releford and Tony Mitchell back.

But gone are the days when Newton needed just one freshman a year like Leon Douglas and Anthony Murray from the 1970s.

“The Alabama fan just needs to understand it’s a growing process,” Newton said. “It’s not going to happen overnight. But he’s on the right track. They could be very good, yet they will be very young.”