2024-25 Conference Previews: one-bids, vol. 2 (1/2)
Big West, CAA, Conference USA...split into two because this was already very long
Hello! As laid out in the season preview for this newsletter, we’re changing up preview season a little. Previews will be released in alphabetical order, but somewhat differently than usual: one P5 a day, one two-bid(ish) conference a day, and one grab bag of one-bid leagues a day. One of each will be free for all to read. THIS ONE IS A FREE POST! You should still sign up for a paid subscription to read about the other 25 or so conferences that won’t be free.
You can find all of these in the 2024-25 previews section of this website. On with the show. ALSO: Click through to read the whole thing. This is too long for email.
Big West
Tier 1
UC Irvine
UC Santa Barbara
Tier 2
UC San Diego
UC Riverside
UC Davis
Hawaii
Tier 3
Cal State Northridge
Cal State Fullerton
Tier 4
Cal State Bakersfield
Long Beach State
Cal Poly
Great conference. Love it. This is basically the most regional conference left, with ten of its 11 members being in one state and the eleventh being Hawaii, which adds its own fun to the mix. The conference has a style all its own: a very physical, defense-first one that isn’t great for neutrals but has worked pretty well to produce frisky Tournament teams. If you’re an offense guy this isn’t your league, though: it’s ranked 24th or worse in eFG% every year post-COVID, 30th or worse in 3PT attempt rate, and 23rd or worse in Assist%. If you like bully ball through the post, come on in.
Conference tournament champions notwithstanding, the two teams who’ve owned this league for the last decade are UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara. Together, they own eight of the last 11 regular season titles. If the 2020 NCAA Tournament were held, they likely would’ve owned four of the last six Tournament bids, too. The conference runs through these two, both generally and literally speaking. UCI is 44-6 in Big West home games over the last six seasons and is 9-2 against UCSB in that timespan, but it’s UCSB who’s made two NCAA Tournaments since the most recent UCI bid.
I favor UC Irvine this year, perhaps not on roster talent but on system, fit, and coaching. This is Russell Turner’s 15th season with the Anteaters; year four, when UCI won the conference but lost in the Big West Tournament, was the year things really began rolling. Over the last 11 seasons, Irvine has rated as KenPom’s top Big West team eight times. The last two times they weren’t (2018 and 2021), it was UCSB. The Irvine System is the Big West System: disgustingly tough interior defense that owns the boards, coupled with an offense that wants to beat you with hammers and get everything in the paint. Irvine got 34.8 of its 59.3 field goal attempts per game last year either at the rim or in the paint, per CBB Analytics.
Now, I wouldn’t call this no-threes offense a no-spacing offense, which is a different thing. Irvine moves the ball pretty well (a top-100 Assist% last year!) and actually starts a 5 that can shoot, which is pretty rare for the Big West. But: going to a UC Irvine game and expecting much in the way of a lot of made jump shots is a fool’s errand. In an ideal world, the Anteater offense will go through Bent Leuchten, a 7’1” beast with tremendous two-way power that is exceptionally hard to deal with in the post. Lineups with Leuchten at center last year were utterly insane: a +16.9 per 100 opponent-adjusted net rating (top-50 nationally), a top-60 offense and defense, the #1 midrange rate forced, and the #30 2PT%. When Leuchten is on the court, UCI is unstoppable. And he adds a little shooting.
Problem: Leuchten isn’t on the court very much. Through the last two seasons, Leuchten has played just 35% of available minutes for Russ Turner’s crew. This 7’1”, 265-pound beast unfortunately struggles with knee issues which have caused him to miss 14 games over the last two seasons. If he stays fully healthy for four months, this could be a dominant team. If he can’t, the next star up is Devin Tillis, Leuchten’s frontcourt starting mate. While Leuchten is more of the bruiser, Tillis (6’6”) is more of the all-around playmaker, one with a 15% Assist%, a 35% 3PT, and a tremendous 75% hit rate at the rim. The Tillis/Bent frontcourt in 2023-24, for all 589 possessions it got together, was disgusting.
As is the standard under Turner, this is going to be an elite interior defense. When they’re healthy, they might just be an elite interior offense, too. I also like the backcourt options here: Justin Hohn and Andre Henry both shot 38%+ from three last year, and Myles Che should blossom as a truly fantastic tough-shot maker in an offense that needs it. I can easily be sold on the top five here, and I presume that Turner will generate at least a couple of quality bench options from that.
So: why does this team frequently lose in the Big West Conference Tournament? Well, one answer is it’s always a crapshoot anyway. The other answer is that most UCI flameouts have the same problem: bully ball has tended to dry up in terms of efficiency. UCI is 34-36 over the last five years when shooting south of 50% from two; above that, they’re 58-16. Still, most nights, this is a defense that is going to force more tough twos than basically anyone with an offense that has a powerful frontcourt and likable backcourt pieces. If this comes together the way it appears it could, UCI can finish top-75 nationally.
UCSB, meanwhile, has more talent. Obviously. Since the day Joe Pasternack arrived in Santa Barbara, the Gauchos have routinely been the Big West’s best recruiter and best portaler by miles. Last year’s big haul was Yohan Traore (former five-star now at SMU), along with third-year player Ajay Mitchell, a former high three-star recruit. Over the last four years of Big West play, based on HS ratings, three of the six highest-rated recruits in the conference and six of the top 13 have been on UCSB’s roster. No other college in the conference has more than two.
With Mitchell, Traore, and former highly-rated recruit Josh Pierre-Louis gone, UCSB’s entering another portal rebuild. Pasternack’s connections were flexed pretty well this time out: starters from Vanderbilt and Wichita State, a key bench player for Stanford, the leading scorers for Stetson and San Diego. When these guys need talent, they do it big, which is without touching on Pasternack also getting a borderline top-100 recruit in Zion Sensley. (Likely to hear from him in ‘25-26.)
Last year’s roster could score, but got demolished in the turnover department and was abnormally weak at PF for a Pasternack team. There’s two key fixes here, at least in theory. Stephan Swenson comes over from Stetson to run the show after Ajay Mitchell’s departure. Whereas Mitchell was a score-first guy but struggled to create well for others, Swenson can do both, though I obviously don’t rate his shot-making capability as highly as you would Mitchell. Swenson’s distribution last year led to Stetson’s first Tournament bid ever, their second-highest eFG% ever, and has posted three straight seasons with a top-25 Assist% nationally. UCSB last had that style of distributor point with JaQuori McLaughlin, who was the engine of the best UCSB offense and team in school history.
I like the get of Colin Smith from Vanderbilt, too. He’ll be your starting 4. Smith had rough numbers last year on a horrid VU team but played just seven games thanks to injury. I think his 2022-23 numbers are much more informative: a +1.7 BPM and +2.3 OBPM, shooting 38% on 93 threes and becoming a pretty crucial piece to a good Vandy team. A step down in opponent quality could mean a serious step up in play for him, and it’s not as if Pasternack hasn’t thrived with this exact archetype before, when said archetype was named Miles Norris.
Really, I could list out all the players Pasternack went out and got and say I like them, too. I generally do; my favorite is Deuce Turner from San Diego, an atrocious defender who nonetheless night average 20 a game. My problem is not with this roster, or even necessarily with the fit, though I find the lack of quality finishing problematic across the roster. My problem is with Pasternack.
Watching UCSB games, I do not get the same sensation I do watching Irvine, thinking that they’re getting the most out of what they possibly can on a night-by-night basis. The last four years, UCSB has ranked in the 200s or worse in either shot selection or offensive spacing, if not both, at Shot Quality. In those same four seasons, they’ve ranked top 60 every single year in shots made above expectation. If you have great talent, it can overcome the lack of a great scheme.
In terms of Torvik’s Roster Talent metric, which is imperfect but still useful, UCSB is the only team in this conference inside the top 100 nationally at 88th. No one else is within 60 spots. Irvine: 246th. One of these two teams has won four of the last seven regular season titles, while the other went 9-11 last year. I like UCSB but I can’t love them.
Tier 2 is made up of the four teams I think can challenge in the event that either/both UCI or UCSB don’t live up to preseason expectations. Statistically one of these four will overachieve by some significant margin, finishing second or even first; one will underachieve and finish 8th or so. Just FYI so no one gets too mad!
The best case from one of these teams to leap up is UC San Diego, who had their best season yet at D1 last year under longtime HC Eric Olen. I like Olen’s system a lot, one which is frankly much more modern than most of the Big West offenses you’ll see. UCSD uses P&R actions more than 98% of other D1 teams, per Synergy, and uses them to extreme success. The best version of UCSD is one with multiple guards that can shoot and slash to go with a center that’s as likely to pop out of these actions for a three as he is to roll to the rim. They also love a good inverted P&R, using a wing or big as the ball-handler.
The good news for Olen and crew: two of the best ball-handlers and P&R runners he’s had are back. Hayden Gray and Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones return for their senior seasons, both of which are huge for the success of this offense. Both are what you’d call playmaking ball handlers, but with significantly different skillsets. Gray is smaller but loves to attack the paint for his own points; Tait-Jones is 6’6” and will frequently post up with the ball in his hands. These guys led the team in assists last year and should do so again. Tait-Jones can also be a solid screener, though he doesn’t flash that part of his game often.
Those two, plus spot-up shooter Tyler McGhie, are the key returners. Everything else is mostly new. Saint Mary’s transfer Chris Howell will likely play heavy minutes but has been an awful offensive player in college. Combine that with Gray (good player who doesn’t often seek out his own shots) and it means they’ll have to generate much more from the frontcourt than they’re used to. The leading candidates for this, universally, are D2 up-transfers. Nordin Kapic (Lynn) and Milos Vicentic (McKendree) are both 19+ PPG stretch bigs who rebound well, shot 41%+ from three a year ago, and are 6’7” or 6’8”. Barring a sudden rise deeper in the depth chart, perhaps from fellow D2 guy Maximo Milovich (Biola), one of those two is your starting 5. I think that Vicentic is much better offensively but Kapic has the edge on D. Olen and crew have to solve that part of the equation to make good on a fun, if wobbly, roster.
UC Riverside has one of the stranger stories to tell that I’m aware of. HC Mike Magpayo has been a favorite for years of the people I follow on Twitter, and his team rated out as the second-best in the Big West last year on ShotQuality despite finishing 10-10 in conference play. I’m not sure I 100% get it, because they went 16-18 and 10-10. On the other hand, they overcame a truly wretched 8-15, 3-8 BW start to claw to 10-10 in conference play, beating both UC Irvine and UCSB down the stretch. Considering Magpayo had an unusually young team where the top three minute-getters were freshmen or sophomores, this does kinda line up.
If you look at it that way, 2024-25 UCR could be ready for takeoff. Four starters are back, there are two intriguing down-transfers from Davidson and Northwestern, and the offense should be much better with a more experienced roster. I am particularly a fan of chaotic playmaker Barrington Hargress, who posted a 105 ORtg on 23% USG in Big West play, along with a near 3:1 AST:TO ratio, against some pretty solid defenses. I don’t like Hargress as a shooter, but as a distributor he’s extremely fun. I like the diversity of playmaking among the returners, including Nate Pickens, a pretty good creator for self and for others at the 3.
I like those pieces. I like what Magpayo has generally done at UCR. I just don’t 100% trust the offensive talent here to deliver. It was a younger roster, sure, but the components of the ‘24-25 group shot 45% from 2, 33% from 3, and 51% at the rim. That is terrible. The fit of this roster makes good sense to me, and the spacing should be improved, but this is the same general group that ranked 334th in shot selection and 294th in shot making last year, per ShotQuality. TBD.
UC Davis must move forward in life after losing the most fun player in the Big West in Elijah Pepper. He and his 20.7 PPG are gone, and just one player who posted 6+ PPG in 2023-24 is back for another ride. The good news is that you couldn’t really ask for a better returner than Ty Johnson, who put up solid efficiency on a 32% USG and is extremely promising as an overall scorer. I’d also note that Johnson seems to be a plus defender in a way Pepper was not; there’s a plausible addition-by-subtraction case to be made here.
Jim Les is a coach I like a lot and think is dramatically underrated, but for this to work, someone on this roster who hasn’t popped before at a similar level must pop. The next-best scoring talent is maybe Pepperdine transfer Nils Cooper, a slasher with a top-100 recruiting pedigree that’s yet to flash a real shot in college. Beyond that it gets bleak pretty quickly; there’s just very, very little proven pieces here, and the roster members themselves combined to shoot 28% from three last year. I actually like the defensive makeup here quite a bit, though, so perhaps they can sludge their way to some 63-61 wins behind 27 Ty Johnson points.
More than anyone else here, Hawaii makes defense fun. No one in Division 1 runs a more extreme half-court system than Eran Ganot, who has ranked top-3 nationally in defensive Assist% and #1 in America the last two years in fewest three-point attempts allowed. The Rainbow Warriors play a deep drop coverage, sprint to the three-point line to run shooters off of it, and genuinely seem much more willing to allow layups than threes. I can’t always say it works - see a February 3 loss where UC Irvine of all teams dumped 93 on them - but even when it doesn’t it’s recklessly entertaining ball.
I admire all of this, because all five starters from last year are gone and Ganot’s system will be more important than ever to deliver wins. The best player here is maybe Utah Tech transfer Tanner Christensen, who blocked 1.5 shots a game last year and can bully his way to 13-15 PPG. Or maybe Xavier transfer Gytis Nemeikša, who I have to imagine transferred here for the obvious reason anyone would move from Ohio to Hawaii? I won’t count out Houston Christian transfer Marcus Greene, who shot 42% on high volume from three, but collectively, that’s it: a lot of unknown, younger returners and three transfers who either played for really bad teams or didn’t play much for good ones. Ganot’s best coaching job of his career if he finishes top three.
Tier 3 consists of two teams who, if I squint, I can see a realistic path to a fourth-place finish. I can also see a path to tenth. Cal State Northridge is the group I’d bet on having the wider range of outcomes, simply because they’re far more reliant on transfers than their counterpart here. Second-year HC Andy Newman, who delivered the school’s best post-COVID season last year by going 9-11 BW, will have four new starters and an almost entirely new team this year. Discounting the three incoming freshmen, 8 of a possible 10 rotation spots will be split amongst people who weren’t on this roster last season.
A potential downside here is that the best player is a returner: Keonte Jones, an incredible defender who posted a +3.2 DBPM last year. Consider that DBPM is a stat adjusted for opponent difficulty, then consider that’s a top-70 returning rate in the nation. Jones is electric. In terms of quality contributing offensive pieces it might be thin. Scotty Washington from Cal Baptist (40% 3PT) is the one non-Jones guy on this roster with an OBPM north of 0, which isn’t ideal when you need to find scoring fast. There’s a couple huge upside swings here that could go wonderfully or poorly: PJ Fuller, a former Washington/TCU guy who didn’t play last year, and Marcus Adams Jr., a former top-50 recruit for BYU.
Cal State Fullerton’s range of outcomes is likely a little thinner, just because they’re a little more experienced and we already have 11 years of data on Dedrique Taylor. Taylor is a good coach who just lost four starters and didn’t really hit the portal hard, so a small step back is probably going to happen. The players fighting against that step back are the few newcomers: Kaleb Brown (Mizzou), Kobe Young (Boise State), and especially Zion Richardson, who comes over from D2 Quincy. Richardson did average 18 & 7 last year for a…well, pretty bad D2 squad. But he’s a plus defender, and that will count. I simply have very little to report on here.
Tier 4 teams are in the group where a real overachievement means finishing 8th in the standings. Anything north of that is plausibly Coach of the Year-vote getting material.
Long Beach State is in a complete teardown/rebuild thanks to one of the stranger own goals I can recall: firing your head coach, then watching that head coach win the conference tournament and play in the NCAAs. Their new HC is Chris Acker, who apparently had a heavy hand in San Diego State’s defensive designs, but might be up against it here with a remarkably small number of proven college pieces. Devin Askew from Kentucky/Texas/California is the headline-grabbing get, but four years of college data on Askew presents a player who is awful offensively (41% 2PT/28% 3PT) and is a drag on every lineup he plays with. If anything I prefer the unknowns, so keep an eye on Cory Curtis Jr., a volume shooter at JUCO Independence who does have a good jumper.
Cal Poly is also mostly entirely new, thanks to a new head coach, but their firing was much more understandable. In comes Mike DeGeorge from Colorado Mesa, who ran perhaps the most mathball offense in Division 2?
Half the Mesa roster followed DeGeorge to Cal Poly, which presents an interesting problem for a stats guy: how well can you translate D2 stats to D1? Elite defender Mac Riniker (+4.5 on Synergy’s version of DBPM), quality offensive piece Owen Koonce (spot-up shooter), and perimeter playmaker Isaac Jessup are all here, as is West Texas A&M transfer Kieran Elliott, who I can and will happily call Redneck Pascal Siakam once you all see him play. Frankly, I’m not 100% sure how to model this, because in decent conferences (sorry, NEC freaks), we don’t have much to go on of basically importing a D2 roster to D1. Especially when I think the one guy who wasn’t on that D2 roster last year might be its best player. What say you?
FOUR PREDICTIONS:
For the first time in his career, Bent Leuchten plays north of 40% of available minutes. I’ll even say he gets to 60%! You can do it, Brother Bent.
UC Irvine finishes top-3 nationally in opponent 2PT%.
Cal Poly improves 40+ spots in KenPom, finishing top-300 for just the second time since 2015-16.
Cole Anderson of UC Santa Barbara completes the rarest of all feats: the 40% Quadruple, aka posting a 40% 3PT or better in all four years of college play.
CAA
Tier 1
Towson
Charleston
Hofstra
Tier 2
UNC Wilmington
William & Mary
Tier 3
Delaware
Drexel
Northeastern
Tier 4
Monmouth
Hampton
Elon
Campbell
Stony Brook
North Carolina A&T
This conference has too many teams. A lot of conferences have too many teams now. I guess it’s somewhat impressive that the CAA, now the Coastal (not Colonial) Athletic Association, has just 14. In 2024, this is somehow not enough to even make you one of the five largest conferences in the sport (Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big Ten, and somehow, the A-10). It isn’t even the standalone second-largest conference among mid-majors, because the Sun Belt also has 14 teams now.
I remember a time of unemployment in late 2016, when I got really into developing an NCAA Tournament stat sheet, and seeing that the 1990s WAC had 16 teams. I thought “that is too many teams in one conference,” and apparently, the teams themselves agreed, because half the teams broke off to form the Mountain West in 1999. Delaware is departing for the C-USA to make it 13 next summer, which kind of sucks given that they and Drexel/Hofstra/Towson have all been here for 23 years. This is the stupidest time in modern sports history, a record that will be broken every additional year in modern sports history.
The upshot of all this, I guess, is a CAA that isn’t really constructed to reach its 2006-2011 heights (three multi-bid years in six seasons) but has achieved a baseline of reasonable competency. They’ve ranked between 19th and 22nd-best in four of the last six seasons. Instead of 11 seeds they produce teams that chase the 13 line, which is how I feel about all of our Tier 1 teams: likely to contend all year, all with serious warts, each with different but reasonable paths to that 13 seed in the sky.
Towson has the most traditional and reasonable path to March: 79% of scoring returning from the fifth-place finisher in the CAA, as teams ahead of them either lost coaches (Charleston) or entire rosters (Hofstra, UNC Wilmington, Drexel) to the portal. In a conference where the average team is returning 42% of their 2023-24 minutes, bringing back nearly double that with an already-good base to build from is a nice cheat code.
The Towson formula has been strangely effective: play as slow as a mopey 1990s band, bleed the clock, and annihilate the boards if you miss the shots. As awful as this sounds it resulted in a top-60 offense (2021-22) and the fourth-best offensive efficiency in school history (2022-23). Last year’s rough 228th-place finish was driven by an unusual inability to make anything, which appeared to get remedied by the acceptance that pure post-up brutality wasn’t gonna cut it and they needed to mix things up a bit. Towson spaced things out a bit more, shot a more acceptable rate from three (33.3% over their final 14), committed fewer turnovers, and generally looked like a far better team.
The centerpiece of that group, Charles Thompson, is gone, but everyone else is back. This should open up things for more drives to the rim, which was hard with Thompson doing good work down low but being very much a traditional center. Towson has no real stars, but all of Dylan Williamson, Nendah Tarke, Christian May, and Tyler Tejada return as starters and hugely important pieces. I think I’m more optimistic than I should be about the offense because there’s a path to an intriguing 5-out system. Those first four names all made 27 or more threes last year; potential starting C Messiah Jones made 11 on low attempts. I think this will be as rim-heavy an attack as ever under Pat Skerry but with the potential promise of better shooting. It works better for me than the other prospective formulas to success.
Charleston, under new HC Chris Mack, saw their charismatic (depending on who you ask) leader Pat Kelsey depart to Louisville. Seven players chose to enter the portal, with an additional two starter-like figures graduating. The unique aspect of Kelsey’s all-gas, all the time system was that no one got more than 25 minutes a game. Ante Brzovic, a potential leader in the clubhouse for CAA POTY, got just 23 minutes a night despite putting up 12 & 6 in those minutes and being generally dominant. The Mack rebuild must begin, with five of the seven ‘starters’ gone but with several intriguing transfers coming in to replace them.
We know that Brzovic can and will get his, largely in the post, but a somewhat serious concern I have is that Mack seemed to add three high-usage guards that have to have the ball in their hands to be effective contributors. All of Derrin Boyd (113 ORtg, 27% USG% at Lipscomb), AJ Smith (107 ORtg, 26% USG% at The Citadel), and Deywilk Tavarez (92 ORtg, 28% USG% at Delaware State) are here. None of the three are terribly vertical guards. Boyd and Smith are roughly equal shooters.
I like the idea of all the talent here; I just don’t feel fully sold on the fit here. On a team that already has Brzovic with his 29% USG%, that’s a lot of mouths that feel they should be fed. I’m looking for two things: which two of these four (Tavarez obviously, but who else?) takes on a lower role, and which other option can turn into a useful role player to fill things out. CJ Fulton is the best candidate to do this as a pass-first guard who is the best returning defender, and I love the upside swing on Xavier transfer Lazar Djokovic. If Mack actually fits all this talent together in a pleasing way, they’re gonna win the league for the third straight year and it may not be close. If he struggles to find the right fit, they could finish fifth.
To be frank I’m just as surprised as you are that I ended up landing on Hofstra third, given that they lost four of their five starters either to the portal or to graduation as well as their sixth man. The leading returning scorer is German Plotnikov, a player I like but also a player with an 11% USG% last season. Guys like that, even as seniors, almost never take a giant leap upwards. As such, with last year’s top options all gone, Hofstra has to start anew to find the two things that have so well defined the Speedy Claxton era: terrific shooting across the board and a defense that keeps everything in front of it without fouling.
The good news for Speedy’s crew: while not having the sample size I’d personally like to see from a rebuilt roster, this should be another year where Hofstra ranks very highly in eFG% nationally. Plotnikov is one piece, but the most proven guy here that I think is going to be highly important is Jean Aranguren of Iona. Aranguren shot 41% stationary and 36% off the dribble last year with a good diet of spot-ups, P&Rs, and handoffs feeding him. Of the higher-usage guys here he’s the only dude that can score at all three levels efficiently. Pairing him with Plotnikov and Jaquan Sanders, a Seton Hall transfer who shot 37% from three last year, is potentially lethal. Aranguren tracks as a potentially good defender, too.
Now, beyond that, there are no obvious proven pieces. Some like TJ Gadsden but I would argue it’s a little scary that a guy who played barely 20 MPG for a bad MAAC team could be a starter. Michael Graham is going to be more of a stiff at center than anyone Claxton has really had before, which is problematic in terms of player agility. The best defenders are either lightly-used P5 guys (Cruz Davis via St. John’s) or Plotnikov, who is going to be relied on way more than he ever has been. This is another major swing team. I could see them winning the CAA because the talent is quite good. I could also see a sixth or seventh-place finish if this doesn’t come off. In general, though, I trust Speedy and crew.
Tier 2 are teams that I like but don’t think I can love for one reason or another. They could win one of the two titles but seem to have more missing parts than the top three. UNC Wilmington lost 77% of scoring from a very good team last year and must replace their top four scorers, which is a frequent theme when previewing this conference. The biggest bummer is the loss of Trazarien White to TCU, which you can’t fault him for but is objectively a thing that would not have happened five years ago. It be what it be.
There are a lot of different options vying for the #1 spot this year, so what I’d guess will happen is that two or three different people are co-#1. This is what we call having three second bananas. Considering the two best seasons of Takayo Siddle’s offense have come when there was a clear #1 guy (2021-22 and 2023-24), that may explain why I’m more down than usual. I’ll take a guess that the two best cases for multi-banana madness are Josh Corbin (110 ORtg on 20% USG), a three-point specialist from Robert Morris, and Sean Moore (102 ORtg on 21% USG%), a guy with a diversified game that can shoot it fine and drive it fine. I don’t love either, but they’re agreeable enough. The best-case scenario is that the delightful Donovan Newby (121 ORtg! on 15% USG%, career 37% 3PT shooter) finally takes a huge step forward in usage in year five, but when your career high usage is 15.8% I guess I doubt it.
For how down I am on the offensive options I can reasonably be swayed to liking the defense. Khamari McGriff rated out quite positively as a big last year down low, with opponents taking 5% more midrange twos and shooting 2% worse on twos overall. UNCW wants to play aggressively and run shooters off the line if possible, which will make McGriff and Niagara transfer Harlan Obioha very important to the puzzle.
William & Mary is the more fun team to talk about, as they make a lot of sense to me offensively and could be hilariously bad on the other end. I am not sure there is a single above-average defender on this entire roster, but I am very sure that at least four members of this roster are obvious plus pieces on offense. That can work in a conference without a defined #1 team and a coach instituting a new, extremely fast style that promises lots of points both ways.
Brian Earl comes in from Cornell, who ran one of the delightful offenses I have seen in Division I in some time. Do you like a lot of speed, tons of backdoor cuts, bigs who can shoot threes, a high assist rate, and almost zero midrange jumpers? This is your team. So convincing is he that a very unusual event happened here: despite a coaching change, five of the top eight players chose to return. The best is Gabe Dorsey, who can slide into a role occupied by the one Cornell player who chose to follow Earl in Keller Boothby. 40.3% of Dorsey’s offensive possessions last year were either off-ball screens or handoffs, per Synergy, which is perfect for a guy in Earl who runs a ton of those actions. There’s potential for a leap forward for his brother Caleb Dorsey as well.
This is an unusual roster, in that of the 10 guys I think can contribute this year all but one (Miles Hicks) is between 6’5” and 6’8”. That is tremendous for getting a shot off and being agile offensively; it could be really bad for sticking with quicker guards defensively. The best chance this defense has at surviving on the perimeter is Chase Lowe, a truly bizarre point forward who attempted as many dunks (1) as threes last year. Lowe has one of the most unique statistical profiles I can remember: a 110+ ORtg, a >10% OREB%, a 20% DREB%, a >28% Assist%, and a >2% Steal%. Lowe is the shortest player in Bart Torvik’s 18-year database to achieve this at 6’5”. The next closest was Cameron Krutwig of Loyola Chicago, a full four inches taller. I’m in a weird spot with W&M where I buy the shooting but outside of Lowe I don’t buy the ability to get to the rim like Cornell did.
Tier 3 features three usual suspects in this league that are down for a variety of reasons: lots of player movement out without much portal work to replace (Drexel), an extremely high band of potential outcomes with an alarmingly thin roster (Delaware), or a former great that returns a lot of good pieces but has been terrible post-COVID (Northeastern).
I think that the median outcome of all of these schools is functionally the same but in general, the deeper we get the more I’m looking for upside over floor, which is why Delaware wins out for sixth place. The Blue Hens lost four of their top six scores to graduation or, yes, the portal, so this is another reload/rebuild year, depending on how things go. I like Cavan Reilly and Niels Lane, but more as defenders than anything obvious I know of that they bring on the offensive end. Reilly is Just A Shooter; Lane is Just A Slasher. Good ancillary pieces if nothing else.
The portal is where the interesting pieces begin, with two huge swings that will determine the floor and ceiling of their season. Erik Timko, a D2 transfer from Thomas Jefferson, is the first. Timko hit 44% of his 203 threes last year on a good-if-not-notable D2 side. Scariest of all is that he hit 56% (!) of his pull-up jumpers, though he only made 50% of his 34 pull-up threes. If he hits, he’s the most dangerous shooter on the team by miles. The other: Virginia Tech transfer John Camden. Camden is a former three-star recruit who has played in a total of 37 games through three seasons between Memphis and Virginia Tech. Now, Camden made 7 of his 15 threes last year and has flashed as a genuinely good offensive big when given a chance. If Delaware turns those flashes and turns Timko into a D1 star they’re in business. If not…well, the floor is alarmingly low.
Drexel lost all five starters from last year and did not get a single D1 transfer on their roster, instead choosing to opt for three JUCO guys, only one of which (Victor Panov from Daytona State) seems to have been rated in a top 100 list anywhere. There are three returning contributors from last year. One is a potentially great shooter, Kobe MaGee. MaGee has shot 96% from the free throw line in college (on 24 attempts) and 18-34 on midrange twos. Now, he’s 25-80 from three, but I do think something more is there. Garfield Turner is a low-usage, high-efficiency big with a penchant for offensive rebounding; Yame Butler is higher-usage but is a poor shooter. I don’t love much of any of it.
They are still seventh, because I do quite like Zach Spiker. In that coaching value above replacement formula I cooked up earlier in the year he’s a top-five coach in the CAA, and in five of the last six years, he’s beaten the team’s preseason KenPom projection. None of those were by extraordinary amounts, the highest being +2.79 in 2021-22, but every Spiker team is great at making possessions go on forever and limiting the number of threes/assists teams accumulate. If the JUCO guys can adjust quickly they’ll be fine. I feel like the distance between ceiling and the floor might be the lowest in the conference.
Northeastern was the owner of this conference from 2015 through 2019, winning either the regular season or conference tournament titles in four out of five seasons. Bill Coen had things cooking, with a fun blend of excellent perimeter shooting and enough interior scoring to overwhelm a lot of CAA competition. Post-COVID they’ve been one of the worst programs in the conference. Four straight horrid offenses, three straight bad defenses, and a lack of any identifiable things the team does well has taken Northeastern from fun to sad rather quickly.
I don’t know if Bill Coen is in Actual Trouble or not given that this is year 19 for him, but when you return four of your top eight from your best post-COVID team (who won all of 12 games) and picked up a couple of intriguing transfers in the portal, I feel like you’ve gotta be good this year. None of Rashad King, Harold Woods, Masai Troutman, or Jared Turner averaged more than 10.1 PPG, but all averaged 8+ PPG, made 14+ threes, shot 46% or better from two, and Turner/Woods/King were all north of a 110 ORtg. Genuinely not bad! The best shot at a leader here is Troutman, who can shoot and drive reasonably well. The key transfer is Youri Fritz from Canisius. I don’t care for Fritz at all offensively, but as a defender he’s easily the best on the roster and should protect the rim well. Gotta do something with this, Northeastern.
Tier 4 is a little unfair. I think that you could split these into two separate tiers, but the overall message for each team is the same: no one here has the combination of talent, experience, coaching, and/or recent history necessary to make me believe in a top-four finish. Maybe! But it feels pretty unlikely.
The best of these is probably Monmouth, who does return their second-leading scorer Jack Collins and a couple other pieces of interest to go with some upside swings in the portal. Monmouth has played through King Rice’s son the last couple of years, which was cool because Xander Rice was good but I don’t know where you turn this year. Having Collins back helps, as well as quality rim protector Jaret Valencia. The problem for me is that the best players I know about here are all returners from a team that finished in a three-way tie for sixth, and the best player from that team is gone. Neither lower-major transfer (Aric Demings from Utah Tech, Madison Durr from The Citadel) profiles as efficient or very good on either end. The big hope here is two transfers from far better schools: Chris Morgan, a very lightly-used forward from North Texas, and Jordan Meka, a lightly-used center from Georgia Tech with great defensive metrics. Potential for a 320th-ranked offense and a 209th-ranked defense seems high.
Hampton has the biggest range of outcomes for my eyes, so I think they’re the most intriguing. They return 17% of minutes from last year, have a new coach in Ivan Thomas (via Ed Cooley’s staff), and have a pretty shocking amount of injected talent from way better schools. Well, generally better schools. There are transfers from West Virginia, UAB, Georgetown, ETSU, Richmond, Texas State, and Norfolk State all here. That’s something you can really work with…if they hit. If you’re strictly looking at talent, this could be a top-four team in the conference. In terms of offensive fit (collectively shot 30% from three, 54% at the rim ‘23-24) or obvious plus efficiency, this could be the worst team in the league. I think the best overall player here is probably Wayne Bristol Jr., because while Noah Farrakhan will get a lot of points I do not think much of him as your traditional “winning player.”
Elon doesn’t own Twitter but does own 54% of their scoring from last year and three returning starters, so that’s nice. I’m in on TK Simpkins, who put up a 102 ORtg (boo) on 30% Usage (yay), is a very good passer, defends well, and is one of the best foul-drawers in this league. Also! TJ Simpkins, his brother, is now here after a quality run at JUCO NW Florida State. I also like Sam Sherry, who has flashed a decent shot as a 6’10” big and seems to be generally good at basketball. Everything else here…ah, I’ll pass. This could be a terrible defensive team outside of the Simpkins, too, as Sherry gets in foul trouble a lot and there are no other plus defenders on the roster. Another low-range team.
Campbell really misses Chris Clemons. Losing Anthony Dell’Orso to the portal pretty much kills any interest one would have here on paper. I’ll note that I like Jasin Sinani offensively, as he posted 55% 2PT/37% 3PT/88% FT last year. I can be swayed by UNC Wilmington transfer Eric van der Heijden too, a former three-star recruit that has been atrocious offensively but seems like a plus defender down low. That might complete the list of potential plus players here on a conference scale.
Stony Brook is still here. They did make the CAA title game last year, which was cool if annoying as I was in the tank for Charleston, but through two years that’s their major highlight post-leaving the America East. I like Geno Ford alright as a coach and think he deserves a little more credit than he gets, but, well, this is a team that returns 23% of scoring from the title game group and went heavy on JUCO transfers as opposed to getting guys we know can produce in D1. Joe Octave transfers in from Holy Cross, where he scored 14.6 PPG and rebounded well, but it feels a little empty stats-y based on deeper numbers. The two JUCO guys that you should know are CJ Luster II and Nick Woodard, who combined to post 37.5 PPG and 10.9 RPG at their respective JUCOs. If one of those two hits at a 14 PPG level I think Ford has done well; if both hits then these guys are going to finish top-8. The potential for a 14th-place finish is very real, though.
North Carolina A&T elected to leave the MEAC for the Big South, then the CAA after the 2020-21 season. They have gone 19-33 in conference games since. They bring back all five starters, which I guess I would be more excited about if it wasn’t from a 7-25 team. The highest ORtg on this team last year was 103, and this roster’s members combined to shoot 43% from two and 29% from three last year. No one is even a competent scorer at all three levels. I do not see it, sorry.
FOUR PREDICTIONS:
In a less transition-heavy system, Ante Brzovic puts up monster numbers and is the CAA Player of the Year.
Towson beats South Carolina on November 12. This is later cancelled out by a home loss to Monmouth in conference play.
Charleston rates as the best offense in the conference but takes a step back defensively. William & Mary: #2.
The Tampering Target of the Year for coaches certainly playing by the rules is TK Simpkins at Elon.
Conference USA
Tier 1
Louisiana Tech
Liberty
Sam Houston State
Western Kentucky
Tier 2
New Mexico State
UTEP
Middle Tennessee
Tier 3
Kennesaw State
Jacksonville State
FIU
Well, this almost has the same teams that it did last season. Conference USA’s longest tenured member is UTEP, who joined in 2005. Naturally, in the process of writing this preview, UTEP announced they’re leaving for the Mountain West. By the time this gets posted, half of this conference’s members may have announced they’ll be somewhere else in a year or two. The longest-tenured non-UTEP members all joined in the second Obama administration. Look at this monstrosity!
WHAT IS THAT. I love having schools in New Mexico, Florida, and Virginia. That is what I am looking for. But as I said to our dear friend Cameron a while back, I do think this conference is going to live forever a la Oasis. Why? It’s named Conference USA. Why wouldn’t it? You can put any stupid number of teams you want in it and it fits. Who cares if there are teams from New Mexico and Kentucky in the same conference? It’s Conference USA, bud.
Anyway, when they play basketball they will probably be good at it, because this is a top-15 conference regardless of who’s in it. There’s been one year ever (2018-19) when the best team didn’t finish top 100 in KenPom. So! Someone among a relatively even and tight Tier 1 is going to rise to the top, finish 82nd or so, and nab a 13 seed if they survive what’s generally been a very topsy-turvy conference tournament for the regular season champ.
My best bet for this is Louisiana Tech, which probably has the best overall player in the conference and some pretty impressive upside swings that offer a huge gap between ceiling and floor. There is Daniel Batcho, who we will get to, originally from Texas Tech. There are players who previously played at Louisville, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, and Oklahoma on this roster. Nine of the ten players either locked into or vying for a rotation spot are juniors or seniors.
Talvin Hester took a team that was already very good last year (22 wins, #94 KP), got his best player back, held onto half his rotation, and added more talent than the school may have ever seen. I’ve referenced the Torvik Talent Rating a good bit in these previews; Louisiana Tech’s is 48, which is ahead of teams like Iowa State and Auburn. The only two mid-majors they would’ve had a lower TTR than in 2023-24 were Gonzaga (not a mid-major) and New Mexico (also arguably not one).
The actual roster should be discussed, leading off with Batcho, who is the obvious pick for Conference USA’s POTY. Unsurprisingly, a guy who played well as a semi-starter in the Big 12 is dominating a lesser league. Batcho’s top statistical Torvik comps last year, among guys in non-elite leagues, are people like Gregory Echenique or Vladislav Goldin: per-minute superstars that aren’t much for passing but know their role and do it extremely well. When he’s on the court at all this team is a machine for this level of competition.
A lot of the non-Batcho pieces surrounding him must either elevate themselves into new roles or build on last year’s quality play. Sean Newman Jr. returns at point as a distributor-first type; I think he’s a bad shooter but a great passer and I like him defensively. Someone must emerge from the upside swings. Amaree Abram is an unbelievable get for this level of play: a player who was an Actual Plus(ish) Starter at an SEC school in 2022-23 before having an anonymous year at Georgia Tech last season. He’s a very good shooter despite a horrid shot diet. William Jeffress was fantastic defensively last year for Pitt and figures to build a lockdown frontcourt with Batcho.
At some point, though, someone not named Batcho has to score. Having Isaiah Crawford alleviated a lot of pressure a year ago but he’s gone. Is it the wonderfully-named Al Green, a JUCO guy from San Diego that Synergy tracks as a plus shooter and slasher? Returner Jordan Crawford, a very good defender who was awful on O last year? Oklahoma transfer Kaden Cooper, who has almost nothing to go off of statistically beyond being a former four-star recruit? I think this defense might finish top-25 nationally; I need to see the offense in action to know these guys can reach what’s possible.
Here once again is Liberty, who has become more or less a March mainstay under Ritchie McKay. Last year the Flames stumbled in Year One of C-USA ball behind a defense without any ball stoppers and their first non-awesome offense in a minute. Three starters are back from that fledgling group, and McKay did do a quality job of replacing some rotation pieces with intriguing-if-unproven transfers that I am fascinated to see in his system.
Obviously, previewing Liberty comes with a lot of baggage, which this blog is frankly not qualified to cover. As an on-court product, I do think that McKay’s project - build a team loaded with shooters, including one large white stiff that owns the boards - is inherently enjoyable to watch. Last year was a lesser version of that, with slightly lesser shooting and slightly lesser rebounding, but bringing back the two-pack of Colin Porter and Kaden Metheny in the backcourt is a good touch. They combined to shoot 38.2% from deep last year, and when the duo were out there together, Liberty’s offense performed as a top-90 unit, per Hoop-Explorer.
Along with Zach Cleveland (requisite large stiff who blocks shots and rebounds), that’s pretty much the entirety of your returners, minus some spare bench parts. Everything else is new. The headline add was Isaiah Ihnen, a rotation piece at Minnesota last year that rates as a very good spot-up shooter and plays like a wing at 6’9”. That’ll make for an interesting fit with Cleveland, a 6’7” guy who plays like he’s 6’11”. Other D1 add: Josh Smith from Stetson, who hasn’t flashed much shooting-wise but stands to reason as Cleveland’s backup and is a quality rebounder.
The big question mark for me is as follows. Four starting spots, between Porter/Metheny/Cleveland/Ihnen, are likely settled. Those are two guards that can really let it rip, a big guy who pounds it inside, and a role playing shooter. Do you need a fifth? The answer’s obviously yes, because you’d like to win the conference. Who will it be? TBD. There are three non-D1 options here that all have equal interest to me: Taelon Peter, a 6’4” D2 Arkansas Tech transfer who shot 41% from three, Jayvon Maughmer, a D2 Cedarville transfer who shot 41% from three, and JUCO guy Owen Aquino, who’s like a Cleveland copy but with way better stats at a lower level. Who steps up? Who doesn’t?
Sam Houston State held up remarkably well last year, winning CUSA in Year One under new HC Chris Mudge (Jason Hooten’s former assistant). This is despite not having any of the five best players in the conference, per KenPom, and having the fourth-highest KenPom ranking on the season. How do you win the title despite all that? Simple: go 7-3 in games decided by six points or less. A little luck goes a long way, especially when you sweep the actual two best teams in the league (Tech and WKU) by a combined 16 points across four games.
Five key rotation pieces are back, along with transfers from Utah State and Kansas State. Why aren’t they #1? Well, two things: someone has to be third, and I trust McKay/Hester a hair more than I trust Mudge at this point of his career. Their track records are simply a little longer. Having the pairing of Lamar Wilkerson and Damon Nicholas Jr. back is tremendous for one’s floor, though. When together last year, SHSU was 13 points better per 100 possessions than when one or the other were off. Thanks to Nicholas being an insane rebounder for his 6’4” frame, SHSU collectively rebounded 36% of their own missed shots.
Wilkerson is more an offensive marvel who gets to fly off screens and shoot from all over the floor. In an ideal world, Mudge can build his scheme around him and let everyone else operate. You still need a ball-handler, though, and that’s where questions begin to arise. Sometimes-point Marcus Boykin is back from last year, a 38% deep shooter, but he turned it over on 24% of possessions. It’s either he or Brennen Burns, who averaged 17 PPG/7 APG but at D2 Southeast Oklahoma State, as your starting point. Burns was fantastic on a solid D2 group, so he may translate well, but it’s no guarantee.
Still in Tier 1 here is Western Kentucky, a genuinely surprising thing to type after a coaching change in the offseason, but WKU did the thing teams never do in the portal era: hold on to basically everyone. 71% of minutes from ‘23-24 are back, the highest number in this conference by a solid margin. Of course, it helps when the new HC was an internal promotion. Hank Plona was an assistant last year, but for eight seasons prior he was the HC for Indian Hills CC, going an astonishing 225-35.
The Indian Hills teams Plona ran are going to be a significant shift from last year’s wild and wooly WKU: still fast, but with a much greater focus on kickout threes. Defensively it’s a huge change, as Plona’s teams generally play drop coverage and aren’t nearly as aggressive in blitzing ball screens as WKU was. A very, very old team who came in to play a largely different system will have to adjust. The good news for Plona is it has the capacity the best opening night roster in the conference. The bad news is he won’t have Terrion Murdix, who would’ve been the best individual player in the conference if available. Blue Ribbon reported Murdix was likely out for the season in their preview.
As such, it likely falls to returner Don McHenry to pick up a lot of the slack. McHenry did quite well in a difficult role last year and might be an underheralded star offensively. Synergy’s Shot Quality metric has him as scoring 15% more points than would be expected from someone with his shot selection, which is pretty remarkable if perhaps scary in terms of his shot selection. That is good, obviously, but this may be a way different system than what McHenry just succeeded in. Can he do it twice?
If not McHenry, I do really enjoy several other pieces here. Returner Tyrone Marshall Jr. is a tremendous defender, a good shooter, and a quality slasher. Babacar Faye is a good traditional big. I think Nebraska transfer Blaise Keita is pretty interesting and has serious room to roam on the defensive end. I guess I just worry about how much more this roster has to grow. It’s extremely old, with an astonishing five grad transfers in its projected nine-man rotation, with almost nothing in the way of an obvious growth spot. This group might be topped out, which is perfectly fine for a coach in Year One but could be a bummer given how old and stable the roster is.
Tier Two all exist in the Surprise Zone: I will not be surprised by much of anything that occurs here. Given the respective situations of each, it is absolutely plausible they could win the conference if several things break right. It is plausible they could finish 5th-7th. It is also plausible, given a Year From Hell situation, that they finish 9th or 10th. Keep an open mind with all three.
New Mexico State emerges from one of the worst two-year periods in modern basketball history with what I’d hope is a renewed sense of purpose. 2022-23 NMSU needs no rehashing; you recall that they literally stopped playing basketball because of crime. Under a new HC (Jason Hooten), and their third in three years, they were the worst team in CUSA per KenPom and only managed a four-way tie for fourth thanks to some extraordinary close game luck.
NMSU, games against Division I opponents decided by more than 6 points: 4-14
NMSU, games against Division I opponents decided by 6 points or less: 6-5
This was something in the realm of an 8-22 team hiding in a 13-19 team’s skin. If Hooten can drive them towards actually being a mid-pack team in Year Two he’ll be trending in the right direction. Most of this roster is new, with just Christian Cook (fine) and Jaden Harris (not) back among last year’s starters, but a few adds here were made that I truly love. Chief among them is Maine transfer Peter Filipovity, an unbelievably good forward for a middling America East team last year. His best stats comp among recent out-transfers, though, is Isaac Mushila from TAMU-CC a year back…who flopped at New Mexico. Hopefully this goes better.
That, and Zawdie Jackson, represent possibly my favorite transfer class in the conference. Jackson is absolutely a Name You Must Know: arguably the single best Division 2 player a year ago for a West Georgia team that’s now making the move to Division 1. It would be one thing if this was a 22 PPG volume shooter with middling efficiency; it is another when the 22 PPG scorer shot 45% from three, 54% from two, and was fantastic defensively as well. If these two guys hit, NMSU might be awesome. If they don’t: well.
Under Joe Golding, UTEP has been more frisky than it has been good. Three seasons of work has led to a 25-29 conference record, which is not bad but has objectively been disappointing. This is UTEP, a team that finished top 100 on KenPom under six different coaches from 1997 through 2015 but hasn’t gotten there since. When your best season was your first, a 20-14 season where you ended up 168th nationally, it’s fair to wonder when or if your project will work out.
The Golding formula will presumably remain the same: a frenetic defense that presses non-stop and forces lots of turnovers to go with an offense that barfs up turnovers left and right. Two consecutive top-100 defenses have been wasted on atrocious offenses that couldn’t score. Good news: five of the seven best players from last year are back. Bad news: the best scorer by miles is none of them and is a transfer from arguably a better version of this same system.
Devon Barnes arrives from Tarleton and should immediately, easily, be the best scorer here. He posted a 119 ORtg on 22% USG last year, shot 40% from three, and is the only player on the entire roster that is a plus shooter. Otis Frazier III is the one returner that could get his own a year ago, though I can’t say I rate him much as a shooter and find him much more entertaining when he’s headed downhill. Until further notice, this will be a defense that is unbelievably annoying to play against and an offense you relish seeing on the schedule. If they ever figure out the other side of the ball it could be a conference-winning product; if the defense falters it could be Joe Golding’s last season in El Paso.
Middle Tennessee’s post-Kermit Davis era has been…ignorable? Something like that. Past of the problem with having Kermit as your HC is that he was there forever and was a flawless fit for program and town. Nicholas McDevitt, after three truly dire years to open his tenure, settled in for 2021-22 and 2022-23…then fell back down to earth last year with a 7-9 CUSA run. McDevitt has four losing seasons in conference play in six tries, which is bad enough on its own when Davis had one but worse when you consider MTSU had four total from 1995 through 2018.
Year Seven is therefore must-win territory. He’ll have to do it with a roster that went heavy in the portal and has returned with five guys who played 26+ MPG last season, along with six (!) who played 9+. Amongst this group, the most likely breakout is probably the guy who played the second-fewest minutes of anyone. Essam Mostafa from TCU was quite good in limited minutes on an NCAA Tournament team and could be a brutal guy to handle in the post with his 6’9” frame. I do like returners Camryn Weston and Jestin Porter, too, though they’ve got inefficiencies of their own.
I just can’t identify what this team has beyond playable depth, though. They have a lot of depth. There’s probably eleven guys here who will play in the rotation, even if McDevitt eventually whittles it to nine. Is there a star here? Is there even an All-CUSA guy here? Mostafa stands out as the one guy who could do it, but that’s about it. If depth rules the day it’s a top-three team; if talent does they’re going to finish seventh or eighth.
Tier 3: well. Sure, someone from this group could rise up and be pretty fun. I just don’t think they will, and I think this group is probably going to finish 8-10 in some order.
Torvik disagrees, but I think the best argument for a breakout of this group is Kennesaw State. This is the youngest team in the conference with the fewest returning minutes, a problematic proposition for a team with a second-year HC that treaded water in Year One. But! They have a legitimate lead scorer, two tantalizing transfers, and a wide, wide variety of freshmen that could potentially make serious impacts.
I’m in on Simeon Cottle, a junior who is a great finisher for his size and has serious shooting chops to go with it. A 109 ORtg on 23% USG is solid for a sophomore. Defensively…bad! But that’s fine for this level. The two transfers interest me most: Ricardo Wright from SMU and Andre Weir from Florida Gulf Coast. Wright is an excellent shooter that loves running off of screens and seems to love cardio in general, which makes him an ideal fit for a Nate Oats-style offense. If Weir hits he could be tremendous; in his FGCU minutes the last three seasons he has been a fantastic rebounder and seemed to finally figure out offense last year prior to an injury. There’s a huge swing factor here; something like a 4th-place finish is not outlandish. A 10th-place finish isn’t either.
Jacksonville State feels a bit mired in the muck; they’ve gone 12-22 across multiple conferences the last two seasons and just lost easily their best player (KyKy Tandy) to the portal. What they have for 2024-25 is a very old team, but a very old team with a lot of middling up-transfers (minus one?) and no obvious lead scorer. I like Ray Harper but the last couple seasons haven’t been his best work.
The returner with the best shot to take over is Mason Nicholson, a center who mostly backed up last year but has been phenomenal in limited minutes. His per-40 counting stats are 17.4 PPG/14.9 RPG, which is pretty wild for a guy who’s grabbing just 15 minutes a night. It’s either he, Michael Houge (Saint Peter’s transfer that can’t shoot but can rebound and play hard down low), a variety of middling up-transfers from bad teams (Jamar Franklin, Jaron Pierre, Marcus Fitzgerald, Koree Cotton), or…well, Jao Ituka, who was awesome at Marist three full seasons ago but has largely withered away since. I hate the backcourt here, Ituka excluded, which is a serious problem when none of your three quality frontcourt options can shoot.
Last is FIU. What a bummer. For one season in 2018-19 the Pitbulls played an intoxicating offensive brand that led the nation in pace, fearlessly attacked the paint, and shot it from all over even if it didn’t go in. I adored it. Now, they play a lower version that still forces turnovers but is atrocious on the boards and no longer has the same foul advantage. It seems like Jeremy Ballard may be on his way out, but honestly I’m not sure who or what can succeed here. Then again, Florida Atlantic went to the Final Four 18 months ago. Who knows.
A wide variety of returners are here but none of them have a positive BPM or any stats worth getting into. I am at least intrigued somewhat by JUCO guy Asim Jones, a small guard who would have been perfect on the pre-pandemic FIU teams because his #1 goal is to get to the rim. It’s likely that none of the 20-25 best players in the conference are on this team. Here’s hoping the next project works out better.
FOUR PREDICTIONS:
Daniel Batcho posts 20+ rebounds in a single game.
One of UTEP or MTSU gets tired with their return on investment and fires their coach.
One of the top four teams here loses their coach to someone else. I’ll guess Chris Mudge of Sam Houston.
Because the top group is so even, you get one of those annoyingly wacky conference tournaments where 2-seed Liberty defeats 8-seed Kennesaw State.