“Any given night” has a whole new meaning in a league that only has one remaining undefeated squad through just four games.
The Flames continue to burn bright
Ever since a rough four-game stretch back in late November, Ritchie McKay’s team
has been on a tear, winning five straight against DI competition and opening up conference play with four straight wins. The efficient analytics-based offense that this team has been known for is once again led by point forward Zach Cleveland, who sits in the top 20 in KenPom assist rate on the season while Liberty sits top 20 in field goal efficiency (58.6%), turnover rate (13.8%) and three-point percentage (38.8%) while being ranked 69th in offensive rating (116.2), placing them just outside the KenPom top 100.
If they expect it to get any easier, though, they forgot they were in the highest-travelled mid-major conference in the nation. Following a win over Louisiana Tech, the Virginia-based Flames take a trip to Houston, Texas, to take on Sam Houston, another one of the more successful teams in non-conference play. With a New Mexico trip awaiting them in mid-February as well, an unbeaten record in conference play seems like a distant dream in a conference that ranks first in the nation in home win percentage (83.3%).
Delaware is impossible to predict
With a team that lost to a DII school in their second game of the season, anything but a bottom-feeding season would be a surprise. That’s not what Martin Ingelsby’s team has decided, though, with some of the highest-level mid-major wins despite some of the most egregious losses.
The Blue Hens would follow up that loss to DII’s Wilmington by giving nationally-ranked BYU a fight into the halftime locker room, just trailing by three at the break. Lose to Delaware State? No problem. They go and beat George Washington in D.C. Back-to-back home losses to start conference play? Doesn’t matter. They beat the CUSA preseason No. 2 by 15 in the next game.
One just does not know what to expect when they take the court against the Cavan Reilly-less Blue Hens, who have taken the setback of losing their star guard to start the season and decided not to let it end them. Virginia transfer Christian Bliss has been a blessing, to put it lightly, using his No. 2 nationally ranked usage rate by leading this team past a major injury.
Then there’s everyone else…
I was going to talk about the success brought on by Middle Tennessee and Kamari Lands, but right before I could write this article, they lost to the previously winless in conference, UTEP Miners, and no other team in the league now has zero conference wins.
That’s just the story of C-USA right now. Winning on the road is more difficult than it has ever been because of the travel that comes from a broadly-named conference. In a league that stretches as far South as Miami, Florida, as far North as Lynchburg, Virginia, as far West as Las Cruces, New Mexico, and as far East as Newark, Delaware, finding ways to not be affected by jet lag and being forced to adjust so a wide variety of different places has taken a toll on the players of this conference. With the almost revolving door that has been CUSA in the past few years, it now is starting to show why it pays to keep conferences regional.
…Or it isn’t showing. Yes, the best teams are unable to keep themselves from staying unbeaten because of the difficulty of playing on the road, but the parity is unmatched. No other conference sees its top teams getting beat by its lower teams all while fan sections cry in attendance. So while I’m not defending a conference that is built in a way that shows that football is all that matters to college higher-ups nowadays, I am defending a conference that takes pride in its cities and the cultures this universities have built.
