The 2021-2022 college basketball season will involve a unique race in the Colonial Athletic Association. The CAA race could come down to a very simple fact. We will see if the preseason wisdom holds up, or if there is a significant plot twist in store for this conference in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Team Likely To Surprise<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Charleston Cougars watched Earl Grant go to Boston College to take the open job in the ACC. Grant\u2019s teams had a grind-it-out quality. Clearly Boston College was impressed enough by Grant\u2019s commitment to defense that they hired him away and brought him to New England to coach with the big boys from Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia. Charleston had to make a coaching hire with Grant out, and it went with Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey. Winthrop remained a force in the Big South under Kelsey, one of a number of coaches who have risen up the coaching ladder by passing through that program in the Carolinas. Kelsey decided to make the jump to the CAA as his next stop in coaching. Kelsey\u2019s style is completely different from Grant\u2019s. Charleston is going to become an up-tempo team after playing slowdown ball under Grant. Many people will reasonably say that making a significant transition in playing style under a new coach will require at least two seasons to fully implement, but Kelsey might be able to make enough noise in Year 1 that he can compete for the conference championship right away. Charleston has a rich NCAA Tournament history, and the locals in South Carolina know this, so don\u2019t be that surprised if the Cougars make a strong run at the CAA championship this upcoming winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Team Likely To Disappoint<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Northeastern Huskies have been squarely in the mix in the CAA in recent seasons and have had a series of good teams. It had to rate as a gut punch when Tyson Walker, their 19-point-scorer and five-assist dynamo in their backcourt, transferred to Michigan State to play for Tom Izzo. Walker owned the game and controlled the action. He gave Northeastern a reliable crunch-time scoring presence, but his passing was not sacrificed for his scoring. He was able to do both and become a multi-pronged force for the Huskies. With Walker out of the lineup, this season is going to be a heavy lift. It could devolve into a very difficult slog for Northeastern in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conference Champion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason the CAA might go to one school and not to others this year is deceptively simple. Charleston under Kelsey and fellow league title contender Hofstra under Speedy Claxton are being led by new coaches. James Madison has a second-year head coach, Mary Byington. That simple difference of one season, having a little more familiarity with a program and a roster, might be the difference between James Madison winning the league and either Hofstra or Charleston doing the same. Byington, at James Madison, has a lot of backcourt depth to call upon. 14-point-per-game scorer Vado Morse might be the best of JMU\u2019s stable of guards. There\u2019s a very good chance that backcourt versatility can power the Dukes to March Madness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2021-2022 college basketball season will involve a unique race in the Colonial Athletic Association. The CAA race could come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19701,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685\/revisions\/19701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}