Big South linkage

Some links to get you ... or possibly, just me... primed for Saturday night's Big South slate.

This write-up is about Samford, but you could make the identical argument this season for Birmingham-Southern as well, since BSC also has a January term and has been dominant its last four games. (Though BSC's Jan-term is called "interim term" and based on the comments in Perrin's piece and past conversations with Samford students, BSC takes theirs much more seriously.) Will be interesting to see how BSC responds (as well as the Bulldogs) come the start of the new semster.

With the SoCon down to an unsightly 11 teams (if it's not unsightly, why is it still the Big Ten?) and their future commissioner already scoping possible new memebrs, they may pick off a Big South member (or two?) to expand, says Ian Guerin. Guerin clearly hopes the Fakecocks are the ones making the jump, and quite frankly it'd be hard to argue that Coastal wouldn't be the SoCon's first Big South choice--since the SoCon requires a football program, Coastal, Charleston, VMI, and Liberty are the only candidates and CCU clearly has the best overall athletic resumay of the four. The Myrtle Beach Sun also breaks the startling revelation that basketball teams have better playing records playing nobodies at home than tough teams on the road. Next week, a shocking expose on how a higher field goal percentage is DIRECTLY tied to higher scoring.

Turn out Lord winthrop's James Shuler missed the Liberty win with an ankle injury and may not play against High Point. It shouldn't matter, but you never know--look at what happened when Torrell Martin sat a game.

I'm highly surprised more of the conference's official team sites haven't made more out of this. I have no clue, for instance, what ESPN did for BSC. (I'm guessing the NAIA titles, but if it had to be a DI highlight...uh, scaring Vandy as an Independent?) I wish I'd seen Coastal's, which I'm assuming was highlights from probably the most famous individual perfromance in Big South history--Brian Penny's 13-of-15 for 34 points vs. Indiana in the first round of the '91 NCAAs.

Predix for tonight: UNCA 82 VMI 70, BSC 71 Liberty 65, Winthrop 83 High Point 77, Radford 70 Coastal 69.