SBC Basketball Thoughts

SUMG · January 1, 2005

1) Anyone notice that New Orleans (5-7 now) picked up a nice OOC win last night? They beat a 9-2 Southern Miss team, 67-56. The game was in New Orleans.

2) At 9-1, I wonder if WKU will start receiving some votes in one of the polls soon. They have a big game with Virginia (I think on the 5th)....where they could make a little more noise for the league. I think their only loss is to Evansville, with wins over the likes of Georgia, Austin Peay, Montana and a host of cupcakes.

Anyway....nice to be in a quality b-ball league. I remember years in the Southland and some in the BWC, where every conference team would be under .500 at this point, and there would be several winless teams. (Our least number of wins is 3).

NTEagle08 · January 1, 2005

1) Anyone notice that New Orleans (5-7 now) picked up a nice OOC win last night? They beat a 9-2 Southern Miss team, 67-56. The game was in New Orleans.
2) At 9-1, I wonder if WKU will start receiving some votes in one of the polls soon. They have a big game with Virginia (I think on the 5th)....where they could make a little more noise for the league. I think their only loss is to Evansville, with wins over the likes of Georgia, Austin Peay, Montana and a host of cupcakes.
Anyway....nice to be in a quality b-ball league. I remember years in the Southland and some in the BWC, where every conference team would be under .500 at this point, and there would be several winless teams. (Our least number of wins is 3).

1)Impressive win by New Orleans, but you also have to factor in that Southern Miss' record is a little skewed in that they have played one of the weakest schedules in Div I basketball up to this date.

2)Strength of Schedule is the main reason that is holding back Western Kentucky from getting votes in the polls. On the Sagarin ratings, WKU SOS is the 201st in the nation. Once they start conference play, their strength of schedule should get better.

I will say that it's nice to see several teams in the Belt with pretty good records up to now, and that FIU has already matched their win total from last year(I believe). Should be very interesting when conference play starts up here in a week.

stebo · January 2, 2005

Belt is up to 13th in Sagarins, the highest I can remember it ever going into conference play. Once conference play starts is pretty much stay constant so if we can move up to 12th or even just hold 13th, that would put us in the top 1/3rd of basketball conferences. Not bad at all. If we has laready lost NMSU then we would be higher, possibly 12th, they are having a terrible year.

Sure is nice to see WKU finally live up tot he hype. It would be great for them to rip for the seaosn with 1 or 2 losses and then lose in the tourney (to NT and for the Belt to get two teams in the dance. I think it is possible this year.

Also I notice that ASU lost to a team we beat - Lamar, and pretty badly, I think that we don't really know it yet but we are going to great in conference play. ASU has outstandin attendance and support and they normally win at home... that loss shows how good Lamar is and we beat Lamar... so I hope that it wasn't a fluke win. We would have won the TCU game if we could hit our free throws, this team excites me and makes me want to face the traffic to get to Denton. I think good things are ahead for the Belt and for NT when it comes to roundball, the Johnny Jones contract extension is looking pretty good these days. We could have lost him and be rebuilding all over again with a new coach, instead we have a winning record, we are playing the teeams we lose to closely (sans UT) and he is getting great recruits. Losing Barnett is going to turn out to be a blessing, as much as I hear he is a nice guy, he is a starter due to experience and seniority; not strenght or poise on the court... I think we will be much better getting our other center ready to go by conference time.... we should be able to have 17-18 wins this season, when was the last time that happened? Not in my days as an NT fan!

Travis · January 2, 2005

And Speaking of our center... Williams is doing an excellent job. I can't say enough about this guy. And to think, he is only a freshman. Give time and i think we have something that is very very special.