CUSA men's basketball tournament

Matt from A700 · March 3, 2023

Seeds 1-4 are officially locked down. If both us and UAB take care of business, we will have to face each other in the semifinal. MTSU will be on FAU's side as the 4 seed.

You always hear it's hard to beat the same team thrice in a season, and I believe it. Look at us against LA Tech last year. Not only would we have to do that against UAB in the semifinal, but we would also have to do it in the quarterfinal against the winner of the 7/10, which looks to be Western Kentucky and UTEP. Meaning if #7 WKU advances, we would have to beat them twice in two games (this assuming we beat them at home Saturday).

UAB would just have to get through probably Rice or UTSA.

Also, it looks likes the conference wanted the ladies to get a share of primetime. The men's semifinals will be at 11 and 2 pm on Friday, 3/10, while the ladies will play later. A potential UAB/UNT game would be the 2 pm slot. I would hope the Maniacs are able to get another bus or two of students to The Star, otherwise it'll be tough to rely on a homecourt advantage to pull us through when most of us are at work.

Another thing I noticed: It'll take a Charlotte home win against UAB this weekend for CUSA to finish with just 5/11 teams with winning conference records. Last year 8/14 finished .500 in CUSA play or better.

Matt from A700 · March 3, 2023

Additional note, there could be a four-way tie for sixth place when all is said and done. However, I have no idea how CUSA would calculate the tiebreakers then. It would take:

*WKU loss @ North Texas
*FIU victory @ Rice
*LA Tech victory vs. FAU

If this all happened, and all the teams in bold finished 8-12, here are the standings of the four teams against the other three:

LA Tech: 4-2
FIU/Rice: 3-3 (1-1 against each other)
WKU: 2-4

Again, not sure of the tiebreakers, but I would think in this situation LA Tech gets the 6 seed, creates a tougher matchup for UAB, then Rice would be 7 as they would be 3-1 over FIU/WKU, and we would play them or UTEP in the quarterfinal.