C-USA Basketball: State of Conference USA — March 3rd
March is finally here. We’re almost at the end of the regular season and after the past few weeks, the standings have changed a lot.
March is finally here. We’re almost at the end of the regular season and after the past few weeks, the standings have changed a lot.
The Tops may have gotten obliterated by #12 Houston last week but they still took care of business against FIU and swept them to sustain their lead in the East. WKU’s 10–2 record is technically the best conference record but ODU is right on their heels.
In the West, Louisiana Tech made their late in the season push to take first place. North Texas split games with Marshall while the Bulldogs crushed Rice so they were able to move up. UAB has dropped down to third place after splitting with UTSA this past weekend despite their hot start in C-USA play.
Some conference news to share is that C-USA decided to open the conference tournament to every team.
All 14 C-USA teams will get a shot to win the tournament. To me, it makes it fair because of Covid ruining games for basically every team but at the same time, I don’t believe a team like FIU should come within 99 ft of the conference tournament as bad as they’ve been but if things go the way they should, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Also, C-USA and North Texas will be the host for the NIT.
Not sure how many teams from C-USA would end up making the smaller field of teams for the NIT but it could provide a good post-season opportunity for a couple of teams that could end up in it.
We’ve reached the last slate of regular season games in C-USA play and there’s a lot at stake. Most of these are games that were rescheduled because of Covid and perhaps the biggest matchup will be WKU vs ODU.
This should decide who wins the regular season title. To me, this is WKU’s first chance to win a C-USA title in men’s basketball and if they could end up sweeping the Monarchs, it would finally give them that eluded title but if the Monarchs were to sweep, it would be yet another late season collapse for the Tops and they would come up short once again.
If a split happens it will be interesting to see if a regular season title is split between teams to where two teams just get a share but to me, I’d love for WKU to finally win one outright.
Another important matchup is UAB vs North Texas. If North Texas could sweep the Blazers they could move back up in the West but if the Blazers sweep, it wouldn’t be enough to pass LA Tech for first place.
March Madness is almost here. After being robbed of a C-USA tournament last year, I look for this one to be quite a show.