College Basketball Betting: Big Sky Conference Preview

The 2021-2022 college basketball season will put some terrific stories into the spotlight in the Big Sky Conference. The favorite is a team which is continuing a spectacular rise from rock-bottom misery. There are old-guard powers in the conference who will contend for the title. The team which won the conference tournament championship last season and reached the NCAA Tournament might not be a primary contender for the league title. Intrigued? Let’s look at the Big Sky before the 2021-2022 season.

Team Likely To Surprise

The Montana Grizzlies have made the NCAA Tournament multiple times this century. They are an established team in the conference and expect to do well. However, teams at the mid-major level often get caught in a down cycle. They can’t immediately replenish their roster the way elite Power Five schools such as Kentucky and North Carolina can. Montana got caught in one of those cycles last season, when a veteran roster graduated and a very, very young roster was left behind with no real anchoring presence on the team. That young roster is back for another year, and while it had the chance to begin to grow up in 2021, it is still expected that this team won’t be fully ready to contend for the Big Sky championship in 2022. However, maybe there is more upside than the experts think. Keep in mind how bizarre and disjointed last season was. It was not a typical basketball journey for any of the players involved. Montana had a very bad road record last year. If that was an outlier and not an indicator, this 2022 season could be a lot better than what many people are expecting.

Team Likely To Disappoint

The Eastern Washington Eagles won the Big Sky Conference Tournament last season and made their way to the NCAA Tournament, where they gave the Kansas Jayhawks a good battle in the round of 64. However, the two best players on that EWU roster, brothers Tanner and Jacob Groves, both transferred in the offseason to the University of Oklahoma, where they will join first-year Sooner head coach Porter Moser in what will be a transition year for OU. Losing both Groves brothers is a knockout punch for Eastern Washington. The Eagles might have been able to contend for the Big Sky title with just one of the brothers returning to the lineup, but without both brothers, they are stuck. They are going to have a difficult year in the conference.

Conference Champion

The Southern Utah Thunderbirds have risen from the ashes. Coach Todd Simon took over the program in 2016 when it was at rock bottom. His predecessor, coach Nick Robinson, went 28-90 at Southern Utah. In the 2016 season, Robinson went 5-24. This wasn’t a quick-fix job. This was a long-term home repair. Simon has made the repairs, and last season SUU won the regular-season Big Sky title. Eastern Washington won the tournament, but SUU was the best team in the conference over the course of two and a half months of conference play. Weber State, Montana, Northern Colorado, and Montana State will all have a shot at the conference championship, but Southern Utah is the best bet to win the crown. Simon says, “Championship.”