Southland Basketball: 2018 Conference Tournament preview

The 2018 Southland Conference Tournament has come around, with a number of quality teams vying for the auto-bid. Does one team have an edge for Southland supremacy?

The Southland basketball was little known for the vast majority of its history, until most recently when Stephen F. Austin became a mid-major Cinderella, led by the great Thomas Walkup. Under former head coach Brad Underwood, the Lumberjacks were the dominant team, with a few straight NCAA tournament appearances.

But after his departure, Stephen F. Austin struggled for a bit, which allowed other programs to fill the vacuum left behind. This season they’re back, and looking to take back what’s theirs. But they’ll have several quality Southland teams to contend with, including the regular season co-champions Nicholls State and Southeastern Louisiana.

Half of the teams in this conference has shown at one point or another a capability to beat anyone, which makes for some great future battles in the tournament.

Below them, there are two tiers of teams in the conference. First there’s the very bottom, held by Northwestern State, Houston Baptist and Incarnate Word. These are very bad teams, with a combined record of 5-49. These teams dragged down the league when it came to conference metrics.

The second set of teams are below .500, with Abilene Christian, McNeese State and Texas A&M Corpus Christi. But only eight teams qualify for this tournament, and the Islanders grabbed that final spot thanks to the tiebreakers. The most exciting team to watch was Central Arkansas, who is in the middle but has the best overall player in Jordan Howard.

The older brother of Marquette’s Markus Howard, is one of the top scorers in the country with 25.8 ppg. He’s yet to score less than 12 points this season, and has a 43 point game versus Stephen F. Austin. He makes the Bears a legit threat, but who other great players that lies in the Southland?