The Sun Belt Slant: Can James Madison stay in front?

Welcome, fellow college basketball fanatics. Each week, I’ll dive into one of my favorite mid-major leagues: the Sun Belt Conference. All opinions expressed in the following should be immediately adopted by you. This is The Sun Belt Slant weekly notebook.

Sun Belt Conference: The more I see, the less I know

If there’s one thing the first two weekends of Sun Belt play have shown us, it’s that we know absolutely nothing.

After waltzing into Huntington and handing Marshall their first home loss of the season, James Madison followed that up with an 0-2 weekend that featured a quadrant four loss to Texas State and getting handled at home by App State on national television.

The Dukes, who have been one of the biggest surprises in the SBC this year, saw their net ranking plummet from inside the top 45 down to 86th.

Speaking of Marshall, the Herd went down Georgia Southern and suffered the same fate as the devil in Charlie Daniels’ song. It isn’t every day you shoot 50 percent, have a player score 22 and another post a double-double yet still lose, but going 6-of-13 from the line in a five-point loss … well, you do the math. Spotting the Eagles a 19-point first-half lead isn’t ideal, either.

Georgia Southern then found a way to lose, at home, against an Old Dominion team who beat preseason favorites Louisiana during the opening weekend.

The Ragin’ Cajuns started league play 0-2 to the surprise of, well almost everyone. Then Bob Marlin’s bunch welcomed league-leaders Southern Miss into Lafayette and sent them home with a 14-point loss on their schedule. Just like we all predicted, right?

Basically, the newly-realigned Sun Belt is rife with parity. I talked to SBC Commissioner Keith Gill last week and he was thrilled, saying it’s created “an exciting brand of basketball.” He isn’t wrong.

It raises the question, though: who wins the league?

Sun Belt Player of the Year race heating up

The battle for Player of the Year has quickly turned into a three-horse race heading into the third weekend of conference play.

Marshall’s Taevion Kinsey is in the driver’s seat. The fifth-year senior leads the league in scoring (20.8 points per game), ranks fourth in field goal percentage, second in both assists and assist-to-turnover ratio, and is averaging the most minute per game of any player in the league.

Not only is he more efficient this year (he’s shooting 12 percentage points better), but he’s not trying to shoulder so much of the load. Last year, Kinsey assisted on just 14 percent of the team’s total field goals made. This year? That number sits at 18 percent.

Herd head coach Dan D’Antoni told me this offseason, “he’s really tried to define his game…he’s so athletic, he can affect the game not just with the ball, but defense, rebounding. I told him, ‘you should be leading us in steals.’ He’s been in the gym every day trying to get better.”

Former four-star recruit Austin Crowley was a role player at Ole Miss for three seasons, but after betting on himself and landing at Southern Miss, the junior is the star of the show, enjoying the best season of his career.

Crowley currently ranks fourth in the league in scoring average and has put up some big numbers this season. The Mississippi native has eclipsed the 20-point mark five times, including a 30-point performance against Appalachian State.

Don’t be fooled, though; Crowley isn’t just a scoring machine, he also leads the league in steals.

Jay Ladner, USM head coach, told me back in December Crowley has been “a big boost,” adding he “loves the way he’s bought into the system.”

You can’t forget about Louisiana’s Jordan Brown, either. The former Arizona Wildcat was selected as the league’s Preseason Player of the Year and for good reason: Brown averaged 15.3 points and 8.6 rebounds per game a season ago, while ranking third in the SBC in blocks.

This year the junior has picked up right where he left off, turning in three double-doubles (two in conference play) and ranks fourth in the Sun Belt in rebounds.

Regardless of who claims the crown, this will easily be one of more hotly-contested POTY races of any conference in America.

The new faces

How about a round of applause for the newbies? The three former Conference USA-turned-Sun Belt schools have made an immediate impact on their new league. Old Dominion, Marshall and Southern Miss have all won at least 60 percent of their games so far this season, and all three are currently .500-or better in league play.

This week will be just like old times: Marshall welcomes both Southern Miss (Thursday on ESPN2) and Old Dominion (Saturday on ESPN+). And they say conference realignment kills rivalries!

Bird is the Word

For the ‘Dumb Stat of the Day,’ SBC teams with bird-themed mascots are 46-34 overall this season, good for a .575-win percentage.

Something brewin’ on the Bayou

“It’s not pretty sometimes.” Keith Richard, head coach of ULM, flashed a quick grin as soon as the words left his mouth.

‘It’ refers to the brand of basketball Richard’s War Hawks are playing this season. ULM has only eclipsed the 70-point mark twice against DI competition, but it hasn’t mattered much now that league play is underway. The War Hawks are 3-1, off to their best conference start since 2006-07, and defense has been the key.

Richard’s bunch have put the clamps on since conference play began, holding SBC foes to just 62.0 points per game, fifth-best in the league. Their field goal defense is even better, second-best during conference play.

Safe to say, something special could be happening in Monroe, Louisiana.

(Side note: the list of notable celebrities and athletes born in Monroe is insane. A quick Google search will blow your mind)

‘Take the stairs’

I talked with App State head coach Dustin Kerns via Zoom Wednesday afternoon. The Mountaineers finished second in the regular season last year but were tabbed to land seventh in the preseason poll this year.

Kerns told me his team needs to continue to work on “progressing” from game to game and adapting to the changes that a “long season” presents. He also gave some pretty solid pointers on places to eat in Boone, NC.

You can catch the full interview on my weekly Sun Belt podcast, ‘Under the Sun,’ on Apple and Spotify.