NCAA Basketball: 2020 conference tourney winners based on preseason predictions

Southland Conference

Beginning of the year prediction: Stephen F. Austin

Prediction now: Stephen F. Austin

This is probably the easiest conference tournament to predict of them all. With a team who went into Durham and became the first non-conference team in 20 years to beat Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the winner of the Southland is pretty obvious.

Stephen F. Austin is currently 26-3 overall and 17-1 against Southland opponents. SFA holds one of the longest winning-streaks in the nation as they haven’t lost a game since January 8th when they lost by one point to Texas A&M-CC.

Other than Texas A&M-CC, SFA has only lost two other games, both of which were on the road against teams who could very well make the NCAA Tournament, Alabama and Rutgers.

Rutgers looks like they have a better shot than Alabama, but still, both are teams that we could see dancing in March. What this means is that Stephen F. Austin has a pretty darn good resume for a team in the Southland Conference.

This one SHOULD be pretty obvious, the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks will come out of the 2020 Southland Tournament with a win.

Big South Conference

Beginning of the year prediction: Winthrop

Prediction now: Winthrop

The Big South is a conference where we will likely see one of two teams come away with the conference tournament championship, Winthrop or Radford. The Eagles and Highlanders have separated themselves by a pretty wide margin from the rest of the Big South.

With Winthrop sitting at 15-3 in the conference and 21-10 overall and Radford sitting at 15-3 in the conference and 20-10 overall, the two are separated by only one non-conference game.

If you look past these two teams, the third-ranked team in the conference is Gardner-Webb who is 11-7 in the conference and 15-15 overall.

In the end, I believe Winthrop will come away with their second conference tournament championship in four years.