Conference USA radically changed its membership in the offseason, but one thing it didn\u2019t change is its refusal to conduct a preseason basketball poll for men\u2019s basketball. It\u2019s an odd tradition for a conference that suffers from an identity crisis. Motto for CUSA basketball: \u201cHey, we don\u2019t want you to know who might finish where in our conference!\u201d <\/p>\n
Well, for the second straight year<\/a>, I won\u2019t let the conference get off that easy. Rice head coach Ben Braun deserves the opportunity to say to his local media, \u201cIt\u2019s an insult to think we are going to finish 16th in our conference.\u201d (Braun, by the way, looks great<\/a> for a guy that has been coaching for 30 years.) And Southern Miss deserves to post on its web site, \u201cGolden Eagles picked to win Conference USA.\u201d So yesterday, 36 rabid Conference-USA enthusiasts tweeted their predictions for the conference table, and I have tabulated their votes. You can use these results to inform your preseason knowledge, or if nothing else, to learn which teams are competing in Conference USA this season.<\/p>\n Southern Miss was voted by our panel as the pick to win the conference, followed by Louisiana Tech and UTEP.<\/p>\n Thanks to all who voted. We lost some of the star quality from last season, but we made up for it in increased numbers. Without your participation, there would not be a Conference USA preseason poll in all the land. Those people are (ordered based on their ballot, from most similar to consensus to \u201cthat\u2019s a fine randomizer you have there\u201d): @GettFest, @88kcg, @jacobbeckett22, @RandallThomason, @BlazeNBham, @BigH1313, @rpm002, @FearTheWaveBlog, @UltimateCrans, @craigcaswell, @HuffDaddyFlex4, @TulsaHop, @rhettumphress, @ConnorPelton28, @RealRichDouglas, @VinceValence, @Joshua_Riddell, @justinleyendo, @c_pete3, @KyleAshauer, @Nbjar, @SteveLatos, @DonGee01, @RoleModel83, @EdlundDI, @ds_33, @glayton79, @GustavAnderson, @KyDerbyJay, @ToddGerkens, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Conference USA radically changed its membership in the offseason, but one thing it didn\u2019t change is its refusal to conduct a preseason basketball poll for men\u2019s basketball. It\u2019s an odd tradition for a conference that suffers from an identity crisis. Motto for CUSA basketball: \u201cHey, we don\u2019t want you to know who might finish where […]<\/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\/266"}],"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=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Pts\nSo Miss 17 7 5 2 2 - 1 - - - 1 - - 1 - - 516\nLa Tech 9 10 6 2 2 1 - 2 - 2 1 1 - - - - 482\nUTEP 3 6 9 6 5 3 2 - 2 - - - - - - - 471\nMid Tenn 4 4 4 7 4 7 3 2 1 - - - - - - - 452\nChar - 3 2 10 7 4 2 5 1 - - - - 1 1 - 409\nUAB 1 2 4 2 2 12 5 1 4 1 - - 1 - 1 - 388\nTulsa - 2 4 3 5 2 6 5 4 2 - 1 1 - - 1 368\nECU - - 1 2 5 3 2 7 5 3 3 3 - 1 1 - 315\nMarshall - 1 1 - 1 1 2 6 4 8 6 3 - 1 - 2 270\nFIU - - - 1 - 1 5 5 3 3 6 2 8 1 - 1 246\nN Texas - 1 - 1 - - 2 1 5 8 4 5 5 2 1 1 231\nTulane - - - - 1 - 5 1 5 2 7 3 6 3 1 2 219\nFAU - - - - 1 1 - - 1 1 6 10 9 4 1 2 176\nODU 1 - - - - - - - 1 3 2 3 3 9 10 4 135\nUTSA 1 - - - 1 - 1 1 - - - 3 2 9 8 10 123\nRice - - - - - 1 - - - 3 - 2 1 4 12 13 95\n\n<\/pre>\n
\n@Sctvman, @otarmy, @dlhow, @HashTagOnions, @Dangelo_Vickers, and @cprentiss22.<\/p>\n