Sun Belt Basketball Weekly Recap
Scores
Tuesday, December 27
North Texas 78, New Orleans 47
Wednesday, December 28
Siena 67, Florida Atlantic 60
Thursday, December 29
UALR 69, North Texas 66
Middle Tennessee 71, Florida International 66
Western Kentucky 76, Louisiana-Monroe 71 (OT)
Kent State 69, Arkansas State 54
Denver 79, Troy 62
Saturday, December 31
Florida International 81, Western Kentucky 63
Middle Tennessee 68, South Alabama 52
North Texas 87, Troy 65
Arkansas State 65, Louisiana-Monroe 63
Louisiana-Lafayette 67, Florida Atlantic 55
UALR 66, Denver 59
The past week was not a helpful one for the Sun Belt Conference. The foremost team in the league through the first six weeks of the season, the Denver Pioneers, had made an impact in the college basketball world by holding its own against non-conference competition. Denver knocked off Utah State to snap the Aggies’ 33-game home-court winning streak, and the Pios also whacked Saint Mary’s of the West Coast Conference, building not quite an NCAA-worthy resume, but at least putting itself in the conversation for an NCAA at-large bid if it could dominate the rest of the Sun Belt. A season with no more than two conference losses might have given Denver the chance to remain in the at-large hunt, so it went without saying that Denver really couldn’t afford to trip up at all, especially not in the early portion of the Sun Belt regular season.
Well, that moment has already arrived. Denver won at home against Troy on Thursday, but the Pios then got blitzed by Arkansas-Little Rock on Saturday in the Mile High City. Denver might have expected a battle from Florida Atlantic – last year’s regular season champion – or a host of other teams such as Middle Tennessee or perhaps Louisiana-Lafayette. UALR, on the other hand, was not supposed to present such a problem. Yet, that’s what the Trojans did at Magness Arena in Denver. They bottled up the Pioneers and disrupted DU coach Joe Scott’s motion offense. UALR established a slow pace which resulted in fewer than 90 field goal attempts for the game. Denver made only 16 of its 41 tries and went 5 of 21 from three-point range. Except for a very surprising 15 points from bench player Royce O’Neale, no other Denver player scored more than 12 points. The result was a shocking one largely because Denver hadn’t lost more than one home game all season, knocking back some solid teams such as Boise State and Wyoming along the way. Denver is now an NIT team unless it can win the Sun Belt Conference Tournament.
Elsewhere in the Belt, Louisiana-Lafayette scored an important win over Florida Atlantic to gain leverage in the conference race. Middle Tennessee swept a Thursday-Saturday set to get off to a great start in conference play. Western Kentucky snatched a Thursday win but was upended by 18 points in an unexpectedly lopsided loss against Florida International.
Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer
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