C-USA Basketball: State of Conference USA — January 27th
We’re almost at the end of January and C-USA is taking shape and headed the way we all thought it would. Covid has still made its presence…
We’re almost at the end of January and C-USA is taking shape and headed the way we all thought it would. Covid has still made its presence known but we’ve all found a way to adapt and we’ll have to continue doing so. Let’s see how things stand now.
WKU now lead the East with a 6–2 conference record after Old Dominion had to postpone their matchup against North Texas. UAB still lead the West with a 5–1 conference record and only two losses on the season. I still feel like UAB could be fool’s gold because they haven’t really played a strong schedule (their losses are to Charlotte and Chattanooga) but they still have a 12–2 record and are, in my opinion, the team to beat in the West this season.
We had some more sweeps this past week. WKU swept MTSU, UAB swept Rice, Marshall swept FIU, and UTSA swept Southern Miss. Charlotte and FAU split games as well as UTEP and Louisiana Tech.
It’s nice to see the Tops with a 13–4 overall record with the strong schedule they’ve had. In Jerry Palm’s latest bracketology update, he has the Tops as an at-large team in the NCAA Tournament as a play-in #12 seed. He also has UAB as a #14 seed. It’s been a looong time since C-USA has had two representatives in the Big Dance and I’d love to see that happen this year in Indiana.
Sadly, this week’s matchup with WKU and ODU is postponed due to Covid. I really wanted to see the top two teams in the East go at it but it looks like we’ll have to wait.
Some of the more intriguing matchups this weekend will be Rice and North Texas. Rice has a lot of wins but have started to fall off some once they got to conference play so I’m interested to see how they do against defending champs UNT.
Marshall has a chance to move up the East standings if they can sweep FAU and the UTSA vs UTEP matchup will be interesting to see who can win those games as well. I feel like Louisiana Tech and UAB shouldn’t have any issues with their opponents this week but who knows.
I’m curious to see what WKU will do. With a free slot or two open will they try to schedule another opponent or have a lot of time off? Even if they could play a team like Campbellsville or Berea that would be better than nothing but according to NCAA rules, a team can’t schedule an exhibition unless they give up a non-conference game and the Tops have already played their non-conference schedule so they would have to get a special waiver for it which I assume would be unlikely. I highly doubt they’re able to schedule a team like Alabama again this far into conference play for most teams but Todd Stewart has worked magic before with the schedule so it’s possible.
Even if the Tops don’t play, they should still hold on to their lead in the East and should have more than enough time to prepare for FAU on February 5th and 6th in Boca Raton.