WKU Basketball: Assessing the Adversary — Belmont
For our next addition of Assessing the Adversary, I’ll be filling in for our Jacob Keith (with probably less funny content even though he…
For our next addition of Assessing the Adversary, I’ll be filling in for our Jacob Keith (with probably less funny content even though he wanted to steal some of my ideas for the previous article) by taking a look at the Tops next opponent, the Belmont Bruins.
Belmont University
Location: Nashville, TN
Student population: Approx. 8,000
Endowment: $171 million
Motto: “From here to anywhere”
Mascot: Bruins (although they used to be the Rebels but changed their name in the mid-1990s due to controversy)
Religious affiliation: Christian — Nondenominational (although they used to be Baptist until 2007)
Presidential debates hosted on campus: one in 2008
Famous alumni: 2017 NBA Champion and current New Orleans Pelican guard Ian Clark and a literal ton of country music stars such as Brad Paisley and Trisha Yearwood, just to name a few
Most of us know Belmont as a prestigious and private university (with a very nice mansion) in the south side of Nashville. If Murfreesboro and MTSU is the back fat of Nashville, Belmont is the Filet Mignon. It’s also a college with its major focus on music. Being a musician myself, I can appreciate this institution and its commitment it has always had to help musicians learn skills and acquire resources to help them make a career out of their music (although I couldn’t imagine the stress they would have performing in their juries every semester).
Their connection to music runs deep. The very first radio station to ever go on air from Nashville was WDAA in 1922 from Belmont’s campus. And ever since then, some of their alumni have been on the radio waves on a national scale with some of the biggest hits, mostly in country music. But that’s not the only thing they are reaching on a national scale.
Their basketball team under the helm of their long-tenured head coach Rick Byrd has been putting Belmont on the map of the national college basketball landscape.
Byrd has been the coach of the Bruins since 1986 and has won over 750+ games as a head coach in his career (694 at Belmont) and has taken Belmont to the Big Dance seven times as OVC champions. He has an outstanding coaching pedigree and is most notably known for his ability to recruit tall white kids that go under the radar and turn them into three-point shooting machines that seem to never miss a shot.
The Bruins
The Bruins are currently coming off a road win at UCLA in the Battle of the Bruins. WKU hasn’t beaten them in the past four seasons they’ve played and, honestly, they scare me a lot.
WKU’s three-point defense is really bad. Belmont’s three-point shooting is usually one of the best in the country so this isn’t a good very matchup for the Tops.
Let’s see how Belmont looks so far this year:
2018/19 record: 8–1
KenPom/NET ranking: 78th/36th
Projected conference finish: 1st
The Tops are coming off a home loss to Troy while the Bruins beat a Power 5 team and one of the NCAA’s blue bloods on the road so I look for WKU to try to avenge that loss while Belmont wants to continue their winning streak at home.
I still don’t know what to expect from this WKU team even ten games into the season. They have the ability to beat teams like West Virginia and Arkansas but can’t beat Troy and Indiana State. The only thing consistent up to the point is the inconsistency this team has shown.
While Belmont is still a mid-major school, they’re one of the best in the entire country behind their senior leader Dylan Windler who is currently averaging 19.1 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. If WKU can find a way to stop him, that’d be great but Belmont has five players (including Windler) averaging over ten points per game.
I wish I could say that WKU would come out with a fire under them after an atrocious home loss against Troy but beating Belmont is something that WKU hasn’t been able to do in a while, especially with them at the level they’ve become in recent years. I look for that trend to continue because of WKU’s poor defense and Belmont’s remarkable shooting so Vince Gill (who is one of the Bruins’ biggest fans and is at most home games) will probably leave a happy man Wednesday night. Here’s hoping the Bruins go 3–29 from deep.
The game tips off in Nashville at 6:30 CST on ESPN+ (which is $5 a month but as many games WKU will have on it, you might as well get it if you haven’t).