Tea Parties and Plantations

Friday night conference shenanigans begin for the CAA and SoCon on Friday. I understand the Colonial is now the Coastal but names are meaningless in modern college athletics. Look it up. If it has a Big in front of it, it’s completely nonsensical.

CAA-

Fine. The Coastal, sigh, is having its tournament in DC. Better than the Wiz, I bet. Towson, 149 in KenPom, won the league, going 16-2. However, UNC-Wilmington, is 108 in KenPom. Either way, Takayo Siddle and Pat Skerry might be headed to bigger things, though, Skerry has been at Towson a long time.

Charleston and Elon are the only other plus 200 KenPom teams in the league. Look what they’ve done to our beautiful boy. Chris Mack is the coach at Charleston. Huh. I knew that but forgot. Get in the tournament, Chris, and I can think of a few Big East schools that might interested in you.

Anyway, the pick is UNCW and they’d be a team that probably scares someone for 30 minutes or so in round one 

SoCon-

SoCon is in Nashville, a city known for drunken bachelorettes. I had a guy in town from Nashville last year for a day that I toured around Milwaukee with. He loved the bike lanes which I told him were really just for a-hole drivers to pass on and sure enough, like a second later, a dude blew by us doing like 60 in a 35 in a bike lane.

Chattanooga won the league and is 110 in KenPom. They have the nations 11th best real scoring %., shoot 36.6% from 3 and 58.1% from 2. They’re awful on defense but I’m just saying, this is a bracket buster if they find a bad defensive team like Kentucky early on.

Samford is actually 106 in KenPom and is the last team to beat the Mocs who have won 11 straight.  They’re 3-4 in their last 7, however, pand have Furman in round 1 who isn’t a slouch, themselves.

UNC-Greensboro, Furman, Wofford and East Tennessee State are all in the 130-150 range in KenPom. Think this is pretty wide open. Might be worth a peek for hoops junkies.

I don’t have a feel here, but even if I did, I have no inclination to believe I’d make the right pick. So, let’s take UNC-Greensboro who have scored 49 in a loss two weeks ago and 108 in a win this past Saturday. That’s the kind of consistency I like.