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I live 15 miles from Louisiana-Lafayette and attend most of their football and basketball home games and a few close away games each year. This team is as good as the sunbelt gets even though the record does not show it. Their a young team with only 3 and a ton of Freshmen and So. Despite being 12-13 (8-6 Sunbelt west) their leading the sunbelt west by 1 game over 4 teams right now. The Sunbelt East is very weak outside of South Alabama and Western Kentucky. Middle Tennessee is good but not great. That is the reason why WKY and USA 13-2, 13-1 respectively in conference play. WKY lost at USA 94 to 90 and USA lost at UNT 70-68 and at MTSU 76-70. ULL has 6 conference Loses, 3 to the east and 3 to the west. There loses have been close except for one. The lost at home to WKU 69-66 at home to MTSU 57-51, and on the road at USA 66-60 all from the eastern conference of the sunbelt. On the west side they have not lost at home to a Western Conference opponet. their 3 looses have come at UALR 74-63, at UNT 72-65, and at UD 63-44. The thing that hurt this young team early on was lack of experence when the lost 6 in a row after winning their home opener. Since their 1-6 start, their 11-7 and continue to improve each time out. Their only non conference loss during their 11-7 strech was to Ohio in the Hawaii Tournament by the score of 74-68. Ohio is 16-9 (7-5 MAC) which makes them a good mid major program this year as they should get to 20 wins. The Sunbelt could feature as many as five 20 win teams when the conference tournament is done. WKY and USA are both 21-5. Add to the mix UNO at 17-9, UNT at 16-9 and UALR at 15-10 and you have a recipe for 2 bids to the NCAA tournament. Because five 20 win teams would give the Sunbelt a top 10 conference RPI. On the women's side last season the Sunbelt had a conference RPI of 8 with six 20 win teams and as a result got two teams into the tournament. We will just have to wait and see. And if ULL wins out, which is possible as they only have one road game left at UNO this Wed. night and home dates with UNT, UD, UALR, they would win the sunbelt west and be almost asured of a postseason, birth in one of the 3 postseason tournaments. Of course the only one that matters is the NCAA tournament, but the NIT is decent and I dont know what the third one is called. The NIT grants a bid to the team that finishes as the highest conference seed not taken by the NCAA for its tourney. So that means is current 1 seed WKY wins the conference tourney, ULL which is currently a 2 seed would go to the NIT and 3rd seed USA would most likely get an at large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Looking at USA, pretty good resume with 21 wins, and a rpi of 38. Looks like a good 12 or even an 11 seed to me. WKY's rpi is 41 so just about even resume's. But only time will tell. thanks for reading my long post. Have a great day.
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