The Sun Belt Conference basketball tournament begins Thursday at the UNO Lakefront Arena.  Here is my preview of the lower bracket featuring Georgia Southern, UL Monroe, South Alabama and Arkansas-Little Rock.

#2  SEED—GEORGIA SOUTHERN EAGLES (21-8, 14-6)  Coach:  Mark Byington (36-27) 2nd season  Record vs. teams in Bracket Two: 5-1 (1-1 vs. ULM, 2-0 vs. USA, 2-0 vs. UALR)

STRENGTHS---Veteran team with five seniors that contribute and three of them are 5th year guys.  Jelani Hewitt is an extremely versatile player.  He can shoot, get to the free throw line, rebound and he led the league in steals and was among the league leaders in assists.  Trent Wiedeman has a good midrange shot and will battle his butt off for rebounds.  Eric Ferguson is a as good a sixth man as there is in the Sun Belt and Curtis Diamond is capable of bringing them instant offense.  Versatile team that is just as comfortable playing in the 50’s as they are in the ‘70’s.  Some teams have to dictate tempo to win.  Not these guys.  Defensively, they’re  solid.  Ask anyone who knows basketball, they’ll tell you Byington can really coach.

WEAKNESSES—There may not be anything they’re really bad at….but, statistically, they aren’t really great at a whole lot either.  They can get hurt inside by bigger, more athletic players.  After the seniors, their best players are freshmen, and that doesn’t always bode well.  Hewitt takes most of the free throws, but after that, they aren’t very good at the line.  Make no mistake, they’re going to miss Angel Matias.  He’s been a dirtbag player and has brought a ton of energy to that team.  With Kyle Doyle taking Matias’ place in the lineup, inside depth is a concern.

OUTLOOK:  Some have called this an overachieving team, given where they were picked in the league.  These guys have not overachieved.  They’ve done what a team with five seniors is supposed to do—play with maturity and find a way to win.  They won’t have an easy time with whoever they get in the semifinals as each of those teams is capable.  Still, if they’re not playing on Sunday it will be a bit of a surprise.

#3 SEED UL MONROE WARHAWKS (20-11, 14-6)  Coach:  Keith Richard (44-101) 5th  Record vs. teams in Bracket Two:  5-1 (1-1 vs. GS, 2-0 vs. USA, 2-0 vs. UALR)

STRENGTHS:  Tough, relentless, in your jock defense that makes it hard to get a good shot.  They do an outstanding job of guarding without fouling.  Tylor Ongwae might be the league’s most versatile player…he can shoot from the perimeter, can score inside, is a very good rebounder, can handle the rock and is an outstanding free throw shooter.   Majok Deng can swat away a lot of shots and is a tough guard for his ability to shoot the three.  Nick Coppola might be the most indispensable player in the league.  He gets ULM in its offense, rarely turns it over and doesn’t make shots…until you need one.  ULM makes you play at their tempo.  No team has scored as many as 75 points on them all season.  Team plays hard.  All the time.  Keith Richard won’t settle for anything less.

WEAKNESSES—With Marvin Williams sidelined, teams with a strong post presence can really hurt the Warhawks.  And, with that injury, a team that didn’t have much depth to begin with now doesn’t really have any depth at all.  They only go seven deep and Ongwae and Coppola are forced to play a lot of minutes.  They don’t get to the free throw line a whole lot and that makes them have to rely even more on their ability to score from the field.  They don’t have much perimeter presence at the shooting guard position.

OUTLOOK:  You have to admire Richard.  He took the job under god-awful circumstances, had to wade his way through severe NCAA sanctions and recruit players who were better students than basketball players.  But he’s out of the wilderness now, and his teams have won the academic award.  The program’s future is bright.  ULM plays like Richard did, with a chip on the shoulder and a don’t back down attitude.  But you have to wonder how long the Warhawks can last.  They lost three of their last five and it appears the lack of depth is finally catching up with this team.  They’re capable of winning their quarterfinal matchup (although it won’t be an easy task) but you have to wonder if this club has enough gas in the tank to handle games on consecutive days.

#6  SEED  SOUTH ALABAMA JAGUARS (11-20, 9-11)  Coach:  Matthew Graves (22-40) second season Record vs. teams in Bracket Two:  2-4 (0-2 vs GS, 0-2 vs. ULM, 2-0 vs. UALR)

STRENGTHS:  Ken Williams and Taishaun Johnson are as good a 1-2 scoring punch as there is not named Harrow and Hunter.  Williams can score from anywhere on the court.  Johnson can shoot the triple and does a great job of getting to the free throw line.  In fact, all three (including Dionte Ferguson) get to the line regularly and all three make them when they get there.  USA shot more free throws than any team in the league.  Ferguson is an athletic freak and Abdul Lewis is going to be a good one.  Barrington Stevens doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the job he does running this team.

WEAKNESSES:  This is a young basketball team and, as a result, makes a lot of mistakes.  They turn the ball over too much and they sometimes get frustrated and take bad shots.  They aren’t real physical defensively, relying more on their quickness, but again, make a lot of mistakes.  They aren’t hard to score on.  They’re not a great rebounding team.  And, they aren’t very deep, mostly getting it done with seven guys.

OUTLOOK:  This team has improved drastically since the start of the season and they’ve gotten to the point where they can be dangerous on any given night.  For South Alabama, it’s all about making shots.  When they shoot well and get to the free throw line, they can be tough to beat.  Their lack of physicality hurts them and at some point in time will probably be their demise in the tournament.  Matthew Graves is building this team to his philosophy and it’s taking some time.  South Alabama isn’t ready yet.  But they will be.

UALR TROJANS (13-17, 8-12) Coach:  Steve Shields (192-177) 12th season.  Record vs. teams in Bracket Two:  0-6.

STRENGTHS:   If Steve Shields is the coach, his team will defend.  And, as always, UALR is a tough defensive club.  Team has multiple outside shooting threats.  Just about everyone except Gus Leeper is a threat to shoot it from long distance.  Mareik  Isom was the deadliest three point shooter in the league in conference games.  Josh Hagins can score a lot of points in a hurry.  Roger Woods, though undersized, can get inside and play tough.  James Reid can spot up and shoot the triple as well as Ben Dillard, though the senior has had a subpar year shooting. J. T. Thomas plays hard.  And, he plays tough.  This team is good at sharing the basketball and with so many ball handlers, they don’t turn it over very much.

WEAKNESSES;  With the injury to James White, this team has no size except for senior Gus Leeper and he’s really a guy who shouldn’t be playing more than fifteen minutes or so.  As a result, they can get hurt by teams with size as well as quickness.  They aren’t a good rebounding team.  UALR has struggled at the end of games at times this year.  This team just doesn’t have the talent that other teams in the league do and, unfortunately, that’s frequently been the case in Little Rock.

OUTLOOK:  This team was 1-7 in league play.  They had lost their best inside player and everyone thought they were dead in the water.  But UALR went 7-5 in their final 12 games as Shields simply adjusted his game plan to his talent.  No one in the league is better than Shields at doing that.  Of their 12 losses in league play, seven were by seven points or fewer.  I don’t know if they’ll beat South Alabama.  But I know this:  Shields will have a plan.  The man does more with less than any coach the league has seen.

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