Sun Belt Conference
March 10-13. All games at New Orleans.
kPOY: Shawn Long, Louisiana Lafayette.

The Sun Belt tournament begins on Thursday with two first-round games at Lakefront Arena.

The Sun Belt fancies itself the #FunBelt for this event, but then the conference went ahead and uninvited its three worst teams and will put its top eight in a double-stepladder bracket. What’s fun about that? It’s not fun, but it is fair, giving regular-season champion Little Rock a nice advantage. The Trojans were the nation’s only three-loss team until a final game defeat at 8-22 Appalachian State.

                         Qtrs Semis Final Champ
 1 Arkansas Little Rock   100   100  73.0  48.9
 3 UT Arlington           100  74.8  44.9  20.2
 2 Louisiana Monroe       100   100  46.7  16.9
 4 Louisiana Lafayette    100  72.4  22.7  10.9
 6 Georgia St.           56.0  15.2   5.4   1.3
 5 Georgia Southern      63.5  20.0   3.4   1.0
 7 Texas St.             44.0  10.0   3.0   0.6
 8 South Alabama         36.5   7.7   0.8   0.2

Sun Belt tourney records (since 1999)

Georgia St.           3- 1
Louisiana Lafayette  18-13
Georgia Southern      1- 1
Texas St.             1- 1
South Alabama        14-15
Arkansas St.         13-15
Arkansas Little Rock 12-16
Troy                  5- 9
UT Arlington          1- 2
Louisiana Monroe      3- 8
Appalachian St.       0- 0