College Basketball Betting: Conference USA Preview

The 2021-2022 college basketball season will have so many fascinating subplots in the various mid-major conferences. One is Conference USA, where a former high major coach has a team on the rise, and another former high major coach from the same state has a team which is likely to fall. That and more in the 2022 C-USA preview.

Team Likely To Surprise

The NCAA Tournament has many wonderful and exciting qualities, one of them being that the coaches who make it big at the smaller schools get a chance to work their way up the ladder, get bigger jobs, and make a name for themselves. In Conference USA, that coach from the 2021 NCAA Tournament is Joe Golding, who coached little Abilene Christian to an upset over Texas, a 14 seed beating a No. 3 seed and scoring an in-state win over a big school. That result not only got Texas coach Shaka Smart out the door – he went to Marquette as a result – but it got Golding a bigger and better job at UTEP. Remember that UTEP won the NCAA national championship in 1966, beating Kentucky in one of the most memorable and significant college basketball games of all time. UTEP has a college basketball pedigree and a loyal, raucous fan base. The right coach can ignite this slumbering program very quickly. Golding shows signs that he can do that. He has one particularly strong player. Souley Boum is a 19-point scorer who returns this season. He can anchor the team while Golding installs his suffocating defensive system and gives UTEP the defense it needs to be a top-tier competitor in Conference USA. The Miners might not win the league, but they will be more of a factor than most other teams in the conference.

Team Likely To Disappoint

The Western Kentucky Hilltoppers haven’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2013. Coach Rick Stansbury used to coach at Mississippi State in the SEC. He had many very talented players but could not get to the Sweet 16 with any of them. Stansbury has outright missed the NCAA Tournament when he had significant talent at Mississippi State. He has a reputation for recruiting well and coaching poorly. Last season, he had Charles Bassey, an electrifying player with immense upside, the kind of player who can carry a team to the NCAA Tournament. Western Kentucky missed its big chance. Stansbury keeps swinging and missing in his bid for March Madness, so why should anyone expect anything different now, even in light of his recruiting prowess as a coach?

Conference Champion

The UAB Blazers have a defense which is likely to be even better than UTEP’s. Jordan Walker and Quan Jackson are elite defenders. UAB makes life difficult for opposing offenses and can ride its defense when it goes into a shooting slump. That often separates champions from fourth-place or middle-of-the-pack teams in college basketball: being able to ride out rough patches on offense because the defense is strong enough to keep teams together and prevent games from getting out of hand. Whereas former Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury has struggled with Western Kentucky, former Ole Miss head coach Andy Kennedy has thrived since coming to Birmingham. He is in the driver’s seat to bring UAB an NCAA Tournament berth this season.