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Does the SWAC Stand a Chance in the NCAA Tournament?

By Rakesh Bi

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In spite of having some of the least successful Division I basketball programs to its name, will the SWAC get anything done in the upcoming NCAA Tournament?

After a series of pitiful seasons, the Southwestern Athletic Conference has rightfully earned the title as “the worst college basketball conference in division one.” You can blame financial issues for its current position, but at the end of the day, it is nothing more than a league that has produced only five March Madness wins since 1980.

But that doesn’t rule out the possibility of one SWAC team pulling off a stunning upset in the early rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Mississippi Valley State proved that it was possible back in 1986, when they nearly shocked top-seeded Duke. The Southern Jaguars made life even harder for No. 1 Gonzaga two years ago, who won the game by merely 6 points.

However, statistics and numbers in general have said otherwise.

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    • Five of the six teams that were blessed with the weakest schedules this season, according to CBS Sports, were placed in the SWAC. Meanwhile, 3 of the 5 teams with the lowest basketball power indices (BPI), according to ESPN, compete in the very same conference. Even take a squad on the higher end of the league and you may come across Prairie View A&M, which lost all but one Division I contest in the first half of its season, or perhaps Southern, which saw similar results.

    A major headline that shook the SWAC world and primarily Alabama State University was its men’s basketball team’s exclusion from postseason play. The NCAA released the news in mid-2014, but with the way the Hornets’ year has unfolded, now is the time they will really feel its effects. The team, along with 35 other sports programs, failed to meet the Academic Progress Rate (APR) requirements and have been barred from competing in the NCAA Tournament. The Hornets’ ridiculous rebounding average of 39.1 boards per game have made them a force to be dealt with in the SWAC, and if it weren’t for the ban, there is a good chance that we would have seen Lewis Jackson’s squad make their fifth appearance in the March Madness.

    That essentially leaves a single team to really keep an eye on coming into the Big Dance — Texas Southern. A SWAC Tournament title is a strong possibility for the Tigers, and with a bit of luck, there is a chance that they will have a decent outing at the NCAA Tournament. The team has thrived under the solid leadership of head coach Mike Davis, 2015 SWAC Coach of the Year, even making a First Four appearance in 2014.

    TSU’s Chris Thomas had the entire Michigan State fan base drop it’s collective jaw back in December, when the Tigers prevailed over the ranked Spartans in December, making for Tom Izzo’s biggest upset loss in well over a decade. Jason Carter‘s late-game heroics helped Texas Southern triumph over the Big 12’s Kansas State Wildcats only a week later.

    There is no saying whether the Tigers will see even the smallest bit of success in the NCAA Tournament, nor can we even guarantee that they will come out on top in the SWAC Tournament itself. But at this point, they’ve made it clear that they are probably the sole SWAC team that can stand a chance (in the case that they do qualify) in the Big Dance.

    Next: Big 12 Tournament Scouting Report

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