{"id":1645,"date":"2017-03-05T14:43:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T20:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/?p=1645"},"modified":"2017-03-05T14:43:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T20:43:47","slug":"2017-conference-usa-tournament-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2017-conference-usa-tournament-forecast\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 Conference USA tournament forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Conference<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>USA<\/strong> (conference rank: 20th)<br \/>\nMarch 8-11<br \/>\nAll games at Birmingham, Ala.<br \/>\n<strong>kPOY:<\/strong>\u00a0Jacorey Williams, Middle Tennessee.<br \/>\n<strong>Regular season champ:<\/strong>\u00a0Middle Tennessee (preseason #121 \/ 2nd\u00a0CUSA, current #52)<br \/>\n<strong>Overachiever: <\/strong>Middle Tennessee<br \/>\n<strong>Underachiever:<\/strong>\u00a0UAB (preseason #89, current #195)<\/p>\n<p>Many coaches and like-minded folks in the media\u00a0like to criticize transfers as low-character people that can&#8217;t handle adversity. Of course, almost all of the critics have at some point changed jobs or schools or something in their life to try and improve their situation.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Now imagine basketball players, who only have four years to play in college. For the vast majority of college hoopers, those are the best basketball-playing years of their lives. After that, it&#8217;s either off to a real job or a life as a vagabond\u00a0in various foreign countries playing less meaningful hoops. So it&#8217;s understandable a player would move if a clearly better situation is available.<\/p>\n<p>Jacorey Williams didn&#8217;t leave Arkansas on good terms, but from a basketball standpoint, his move to Middle Tennessee for his final season was a wonderful change. At Arkansas, he was often an undersized four who struggled to make shots but never stopped trying to. With the Blue Raiders, Williams has found his level.<\/p>\n<p>He still mainly plays the four, but now he&#8217;s the one with height and length advantages and his game has blossomed in a way it wouldn&#8217;t have with another season in Fayetteville. Furthermore, he led Middle Tennessee to a regular-season title and helped put the club in good position to get an at-large bid even if it doesn&#8217;t win the conference tournament.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s about a 50\/50 chance of that happening according to this analysis, which gives UAB a half dose of home-court advantage.<\/p>\n<pre><b>                     Qtrs Semis Final Champ<\/b>\r\n 1 Middle Tennessee   100  88.2  71.0  49.5\r\n 2 Louisiana Tech     100  72.6  47.3  22.0\r\n 3 Old Dominion       100  64.6  29.4  11.4\r\n 5 Rice              86.0  53.3  15.0   6.4\r\n 7 UAB               67.4  22.1  10.6   3.4\r\n 4 UTEP               100  43.4   9.5   3.1\r\n 6 Marshall          73.5  29.1   9.9   2.6\r\n 8 Western Kentucky  54.2   7.1   2.6   0.7\r\n 9 UTSA              45.8   4.7   1.6   0.4\r\n10 Charlotte         32.6   5.3   1.6   0.3\r\n11 Florida Atlantic  26.5   6.3   1.2   0.2\r\n12 Southern Miss     14.0   3.3   0.3   0.03<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conference\u00a0USA (conference rank: 20th) March 8-11 All games at Birmingham, Ala. kPOY:\u00a0Jacorey Williams, Middle Tennessee. Regular season champ:\u00a0Middle Tennessee (preseason #121 \/ 2nd\u00a0CUSA, current #52) Overachiever: Middle Tennessee Underachiever:\u00a0UAB (preseason #89, current #195) Many coaches and like-minded folks in the media\u00a0like to criticize transfers as low-character people that can&#8217;t handle adversity. Of course, almost all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1645"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1648,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions\/1648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}