Now that we’re about a week into the 2017-18 College Basketball season, we’ll begin to focus on some of the lesser-known programs in Division 1 and scouring for upsets courtesy of schools from the smaller conferences and divisions. The first few days of the season did not disappoint, with several surprising results not necessarily involving Top 25 teams.
Tracking the SWAC Conference
Prior to the season, we zeroed in on the brutal pre-conference schedule of Prairie View A&M University, a member of Division 1’s Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). As it turns out – and this is nothing new – each of the conference’s member schools play a similar type of schedule, which features mostly or exclusively road games against teams from some of college basketball’s top conferences. In other words, the SWAC Conference schools play a pre-conference schedule that most of college basketball’s more successful programs would never consider playing.
The problem is, the SWAC schools lose most of those games, and only in rare cases are the games even competitive. Through Sunday, November 19th, the SWAC schools had a cumulative record of 1 win against 37 defeats, with the losses coming by an average of about 24 points. Ironically, the win-loss record exactly matches the conference’s total home game (1) versus road game (37) tally; the one win coming via a 38- point home blowout by Jackson State University against Millsaps College, an NCAA Division 3 school located just 3 miles away, also in Jackson, Mississippi.
Of the ten SWAC schools, pre-season favorite Texas Southern University has clearly been the most competitive, despite playing three road games against schools from the so-called “power conferences” – at Washington State (a 2-point loss), at Ohio State (an 18-point loss) and at Syracuse (a 13-point loss) – and a fourth game against 2017 NCAA Tournament runner-up Gonzaga (a 28-point loss). And they still have road games at Kansas, Clemson, Oregon and Baylor in the next few weeks. Alabama State has lost all four of their games -including one against 2017 NCAA Tournament semi-finalist Oregon – by an average of 35 points.
The NCAA Division 1 Mid-major Revolution Continues
The first mid-major blow was landed by the Missouri Valley Conference’s Sycamores of Indiana State University, who have only been to the NCAA Tournament three times since Larry Bird led them to a 33-1 record and the national title game in 1979. They soundly defeated the Big Ten’s Indiana Hoosiers on the road, 90 to 69 on March 10th. One could easily imagine former Hoosier coach Tom Crean pacing back and forth in his living room wearing a Cheshire cat smirk on his face that evening while watching the game.
Danny Manning’s Wake Forest Unviversity squad of the powerful Atlantic Coast Conference might be feeling a little heat after losing their first two home games to schools from smaller conferences: an 85-83 loss to Georgia Southern University (a school more noted for its football dominance at the 1-AA level in the 1980’s under legendary coach Erk Russell) of the Sun Belt Conference, and a 79-66 loss to Liberty University of the Big South Conference. Liberty hadn’t defeated a non-conference Division 1 opponent on the road in nearly five years.
Eastern Washington of the Big Sky Conference eked out a 67-61 road win over Stanford University of the Pacific-10 Conference, while Cal-Riverside of the Big West Conference also defeated a Pac-10 opponent on the road – the University of California-Berkeley, 74-66.
And hats off to the Western Athletic Conference’s Utah Valley Wolverines, who scheduled road games against Kentucky and Duke on consecutive nights and lived to tell about it. They actually led at Kentucky at halftime 34-25 before losing by ten, then lost by 30 at Duke the very next night.
Lower Division Schools Causing Problems Already
Old friend and giant-slayer Our Lady of the Lake University (San Antonio. Texas), an NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) school, went on the road and took D-1’s Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (Southland Conference) to the wire before losing 69-68 on a buzzer beater.
The Tigers of Ouachita Baptist University (Arkadelphia, Arkansas), an NCAA Division 2 school, defeated Arkansas-Little Rock of the Sun Belt Conference 81-79, and the Division 2 Golden Bears of Concordia University-St. Paul (Minnesota) beat up Wisconsin-Milwaukee of the Horizon League 69-55, both road upsets.
We even have an early Division 3 troublemaker, with the Yellow Jackets of LeTourneau University (Longview, Texas) playing a road game at Northwestern State University, a Division 1 school from the Southland Conference, and winning convincingly 99-84 0n November 12th.
Why Even Bother?
And, of course, every year there are the contests that seemingly benefit neither team:
- Green Bay (NCAA Division 1/Horizon League) 98, Lakeland University (Plymouth, Wisconsin/NCAA Division 3) 27
- Western Illinois (NCAA Division 1/Summit League) 102, Calvary University (Kansas City/ Midwest Christian College Conference) 25 (The score was 53-8 at halftime)
- Youngstown State University (NCAA Division 1/Horizon League) 134, Franciscan University (Steubenville Ohio/NCAA Division 3) 46
- Purdue University (NCAA Division 1/Big Ten Conference) 111, Chicago State (NCAA Division 1/Western Athletic Conference) 42
And we’re just getting started. More weirdness to come!
