Updates: Southern and Sun Belt

Southern

Summary: Chattanooga… East Tennessee State… everybody else.  Mercer went out and played a fair schedule, but has nothing to show for it.  Their plodding tactics play better in conference against weaker teams, but probably can’t shake the top two.  Furman has played teams pretty close and stolen a few.  If they had been able to topple Winthrop and Asheville, I’d be more convinced they will hang.  Greensboro is also middle of the pack.  I have been hoping Duggar Baucom’s tactics would work somewhere, but so far the results have been too erratic to trust.

What I got wrong: Samford and Furman are better than Mercer.  Everything else looks to be slotted correctly, but ETSU is much better than expected.

Prognosis: Not many surprises here.  The conference as whole plays pretty slow except The Citadel, so there are a lot of controlled, lower scoring games.  These are usually a bettors dream, but I haven’t been able to make heads or tails out of league play yet.  I’m not convinced Chattanooga can run away with this one, but they should be less prone to dropping games on the road than ETSU, as their pressure style picks up more ticky tack fouls in opposing gyms.  The bottom three teams are not going anywhere fast, but the middle 5 spots are up for grabs.  Wofford appears to be the weakest of that group, but can clearly keep games close through good foul shooting despite a sieve for defense.

SC	Preseason	Realtime
1	Chattanooga	Chattanooga
2	East Tennessee State	East Tennessee State
3	Mercer	Samford
4	UNC Greensboro	Furman
5	Furman	UNC Greensboro
6	Wofford	Mercer
7	Samford	Wofford
8	The Citadel	The Citadel
9	Virginia Military	Virginia Military
10	Western Carolina	Western Carolina

Sun Belt

Summary: For those of you not paying attention, get to know the Texas-Arlington Mavericks now, so you can take advantage of a probable first round upset in your pool.  Scott Cross will take on all challengers and plays a good inside game that is often overlooked in this age of tempo and 3’s.  After missing their first 3 chances to lock up quality wins, they dropped Texas and St. Mary’s.  Little Rock has fallen back to the pack after last year’s run, and the only team even close right now is Lafayette, though Arkansas State holds a win over them as well as the upset at Georgetown and knocking of Chattanooga and Lehigh.  Georgia Southern is strong enough to push the conference, but Arlington is a solid 13/14 seed, and everyone else is 15/16.

What I got wrong:  A little bit of everything.  Arkansas State is good, Monroe is not.  I very much overestimated Coastal Carolina’s ability to play up to the level of competition in the Sun Belt, but Cliff Ellis scheduled ambitiously… they just couldn’t beat any of the better teams.

Prognosis:  Georgia Southern catches Arkansas State and Lafayette.  Coastal Carolina rebounds to the middle of the pack.  The bottom half of the conference continues to fling up enough bricks to get into a masonry union.  Arlington walks with the regular season title and doesn’t really get challenged in the SB tourney as ASU and ULL stop overachieving.

SB	Preseason	Realtime
1	Arlington	Arlington
2	Georgia Southern	Georgia Southern
3	Coastal Carolina	Lafayette
4	Georgia State	Arkansas State
5	Little Rock	Little Rock
6	Lafayette	Georgia State
7	Monroe	Coastal Carolina
8	South Alabama	South Alabama
9	Texas State	Texas State
10	Appalachian State	Troy
11	Troy	Monroe
12	Arkansas State	Appalachian State