Conference Calling 31 in 31 Series: 2012-13 Southland Preview

The Conference Calling 31 in 31 preview series will examine each of the NCAA Division I auto-bid conferences (so no Great West or independents), one per day, leading up to college basketball's opening day on November 9. 

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For once, a move in The Great College Sports Realignment Apocalypse made some sense. Oral Roberts bailed on the Summit League, forsaking all those wonderfully scenic trips to Fargo, ND and Fort Wayne, Ind., for the Southland, full of schools in the Tulsa-based university's recruiting wheelhouse of Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana.

After routinely being a heavy in the Summit, a move to the slightly lower-level Southland makes ORU a quick favorite to get to its first NCAA tournament since 2008. There are a few schools with something to say about that, however, including one of the nation's top defensive teams and a coach with a famous name and a now-famous rant (pictured).

For more on TBI's No. 26 conference, read on after the jump.

Conference Calling's 31 in 31 Series: 2012-13 Atlantic Sun Preview

The Conference Calling 31 in 31 preview series will examine each of the NCAA Division I auto-bid conferences (so no Great West or independents), one per day, leading up to college basketball's opening day on November 9.

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The Atlantic Sun Conference has been Belmont's plaything for most of the past seven years. Six of those seasons ended with either a regular-season or tournament title for the Bruins, and five saw Belmont carry the league's banner into the NCAA tournament.

Now, the Bruins are in the Ohio Valley and the rest of the A-Sun is alternately bemoaning the damage to the league's national profile and joining in rousing choruses of "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead."

Every school in a conference with one dominant program (take a bow, Big West) knows the benefit of having a member with an elevated profile, but that benefit is often outweighed by the sheer difficulty of toppling the resident Goliath. Now, the A-Sun moves into a more balanced future, but one where the 10 remaining members have to create their own relevance.

The damage to the league's national profile drops the ASC to No. 27 on TBI's Conference Calling rankings. More after the jump.

Conference Calling's 31 in 31: 2012-13 Big South Preview

The Conference Calling 31 in 31 preview series will examine each of the NCAA Division I auto-bid conferences (so no Great West or independents), one per day, leading up to college basketball's opening day on November 9. 

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UNC Asheville (pictured here in varying states of freakedness) scared the bejesus out of top-seeded Syracuse in the 2012 NCAA tournament, and came close to putting the Big South on the map for perpetuity. The league has a mere three tournament wins in its history, and the last one came in 2007, when Winthrop slugged its way up to a No. 11 seed. Siring the first triumphant No. 16, though, would have been major.

It's highly doubtful anyone in this conference will rate the kind of spot Winthrop got, and it's even questionable if anyone's got the kind of roster to catch lightning the way UNCA nearly did. There's no clear favorites for league champion, Player of the Year, all-conference or anything, but one team does have a large advantage that will materialize in March.

More on that and TBI's No. 28 conference after the jump.

Conference Calling's 31 in 31: 2012-13 America East Preview

The Conference Calling 31 in 31 preview series will examine each of the NCAA Division I auto-bid conferences (so no Great West or independents), one per day, leading up to college basketball's opening day on November 9.

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Will the last player out of the America East Conference please turn out the lights?

Okay, not everyone has left, but it certainly feels that way. Players who won league honors left Vermont (Rookie of the Year Four McGlynn to Towson), Boston University (2010 all-conference big man Jake O'Brien to Temple) and Albany (leading scorer Gerardo Suero to an alleged pro career).

Even teams like Binghamton, of the whopping two-win season, were affected by attrition, losing three of its top five scorers to transfers.

Every player affiliated with Boston U. will also be leaving next year, since the school itself is headed to the Patriot League.

The situation in the AE is only slightly less fluid than that in the Atlantic Ocean. The talent drain has the AE weighing in as TBI's No. 29 conference for the 2012-13 season.

More after the jump.

Conference Calling 31 in 31 Series: 2012-13 MEAC Preview

The Conference Calling 31 in 31 preview series will examine each of the NCAA Division I auto-bid conferences (so no Great West or independents), one per day, leading up to college basketball's opening day on November 9.

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If you know nothing else about the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, know this: the league is responsible for three of the biggest, most annoying, most bracket-shredding upsets in NCAA tournament history.

1997: Coppin State stops a B.J. McKie/Melvin Watson-led South Carolina team 78-65. The MEAC's first tournament win, and only the third time a 15-seed had beaten a No. 2.
2001: Hampton (another No. 15) beats Jamaal Tinsley's Iowa State team 58-57, scoring the final basket with less than seven seconds left.
2012: You know about Norfolk State over Missouri. This writer certainly does, because he pegged Mizzou as a Final Four team.

Six times a No. 15 has beaten a No. 2, and three of those upsets have been perpetrated by MEAC schools.

Are there schools in this year's MEAC that could add to the line of scalps on the league's figurative wall? There might be one. Read on to find out who.

Conference Calling's 31 in 31: 2012-13 SWAC Preview

Texas Southern's new coach Mike Davis.

The Conference Calling 31 in 31 preview series will examine each of the NCAA Division I auto-bid conferences (so no Great West or independents), one per day, leading up to college basketball's opening day on November 9.

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It's difficult to preview a league like the Southwestern Athletic Conference. Transfers in and out, among players and coaches, create a major lack of stability in SWAC programs.

The league is to college basketball what the Sun Belt and MAC are to college football, the schools who take overmatched teams to major-conference home courts, absorb ugly losses and limp home smiling with a large paycheck. The 10 SWAC schools had a record of 7-96 in games against Division I non-conference opponents.

Still, the league plays Division I basketball and has an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, so it merits a spot in the Conference Calling preview series. Its epic struggles against D-I opposition, though, mean that the SWAC gets to kick off the series as the No. 31 conference in America (yes, out of 31...sorry, SWAC fans).

The 2012 Bilas Invitational Tournament: Midwest Region Rounds 1 & 2

The fourth and final region in the first round of the BIT is upon us. Read the last several posts for details. And now to the games.

Play-In Game:
Oral Roberts 80, Akron 61
The Zips did a decent job of containing ORU scoring star Dominique Morrison, but Michael Craion's 24 points rendered the effort moot.

Craion drilled 10 of his 11 shots, also pulling down eight rebounds to headline a game in which the Golden Eagles never trailed. 14 of the 24 points came in the first half, helping Oral Roberts to a 38-27 lead at the break.

Akron was led by 14 points off the bench from Demetrius Treadwell. He was the only Zip in double figures. All-MAC selections Nikola Cvetinovic and Zeke Marshall combined for only 16 points and four rebounds, well off their season average of 20.3 and 10.8.

Damen Bell-Holter added 14 points and 11 rebounds for the Eagles, while Morrison kicked in 11 points.

The 2012 Bilas Invitational Tournament: South Region Rounds 1 & 2

It's been a while, but it's time to continue the tournament that pits the 2011-12 season's REAL best 68 college basketball teams against each other. Read the previous two posts for the first two regions and additional details. Let's get into some games.

Play-In Game:
Tennessee 65, LaSalle 61
The Vols only shot 37 percent (20-53) from the floor, but prevailed over LaSalle by crashing the glass and drawing contact.

Tennessee outrebounded the Explorers 37-28, with Jeronne Maymon pulling down 10 to go with his nine points. UT's other big advantage came at the foul line, where it converted 18-of-24 compared to LaSalle's 7-of-11.

A Sam Mills 3-pointer trimmed Tennessee's lead to two with just under seven minutes remaining, but the Explorers struggled to make clean stops from there. The Vols shot only 3-of-10 from the floor in the final seven minutes, but made five of six free throws

An Earl Pettis three cut the lead to 64-61 with 59 seconds left, and a miss from Maymon allowed LaSalle to come down with a chance to tie. Ramon Galloway missed a foul-line jumper with 12 seconds left, Stokes tore down the rebound and Cameron Tatum split a one-and-one to set the final margin.

LaSalle freshman forward Jerrell Wright was held to six points and four rebounds in only 14 minutes before fouling out. Pettis led all scorers with 16 points, adding five boards and four assists.

UT was led by Jordan McRae with 14 points and seven rebounds. Point guard Trae Golden added 12 points, five assists, three rebounds and three steals.

2012 Bilas Invitational Tournament: West Region Rounds 1 & 2

In the previous post, you saw the BIT get started with results both expected (Kentucky stomping through two rounds) and unexpected (Duke tanking, Belmont and UNLV reaching the Sweet 16). Now, the tournament moves to the West Region, which will be paired against the East in the Final Four.

In case you don't care to refresh by looking at the prior post, each of these games is simulated seven times at WhatIf Sports, two on each team's "home court" and three on "neutral sites." Depth chart changes, such as Fab Melo's ineligibility for Syracuse, are accounted for.

Once again, the full S-Curve is here, and the up-to-date bracket is here. Let's see if West top seed Ohio State survives.

2012 Bilas Invitational Tournament: East Region Rounds 1 and 2

If you're like me, you're seeking college basketball news to read and write about aside from the usual offseason slobbering over high school players. Sometimes, we have to invent that news ourselves. Spreading rumors about coaches on the hot seat is considered tacky and indecorous when we don't have the ear of any prominent athletic directors, though.

On a blog that went to the effort of seeding and bracketing a full tournament that trumpets itself as featuring "the real best 68 teams in the nation," it almost seems like something's missing if we don't actually play it through and see how the event would have unfolded. The only way I know of to do that involves our boys at WhatIf Sports.

WhatIf gives you options to match nearly every team in America against one another and decide how those games would have played out. Depth chart changes can even be made, reflecting such real-world events as Fab Melo's ineligibility for Syracuse.

The format for the Bilas Invitational was that each matchup would be simulated seven times, in effect making each game an NBA-style series. The first four were each under the "Use Home Court" option. Any beyond that used the "Neutral Court" option.

The results that will be posted are of the winning team's fourth win in that seven-game series. You can go simulate these games and you'll get highly different results, but these are what the simulator produced for me.

Go here to take a look at the full S-Curve, and the bracket is here. We'll start with the overall top seed, the Kentucky Wildcats, and their journey through the East Region.