The reasons should be fairly obvious, and they mostly have to do with Wade Baldwin and Damian Jones.
On Monday, College Basketball Talk broke down the SEC heading into 2016-17, and they think Vanderbilt will be the 10th-best team in the Southeastern Conference. In basketball.
This is probably going to happen a lot this offseason, and it's probably going to happen more with national writers (who concentrate much more on the macro and have a bird's-eye view of the college basketball landscape) than it will with people who focus much more on the SEC. There's going to be a disconnect between people whose view of the SEC is "Kentucky, and then 13 other schools that supposedly field basketball teams" and people who are more tuned in to the SEC and Vanderbilt in particular.