Saturday, September 23, 2017

Ohio Valley:Jacksonville St. Football Dominance Builds on Hoops Upset of Belmont

Jacksonville State's destruction of a strong Liberty University team Saturday will push them into top 100 of all football teams and certainly one of the top FCS teams to build on their March Madness appearance in place of the 23-7 Belmont team that focuses only on basketball. Belmont should be the favorite again, but Murray State should bounce back to contend after a rare off year.

Value Add projects  Belmont may fall a little from their 83rd ranking of 351 basketball teams last year, but they still project at 115th, 11 spots ahead of Murray State for the upcoming basketball season. As for preseason Player of the Year it is reversed, with Murray State's Jonathan Stark the best player in the conference, nudging out Dylan Windler of Belmont.

When preseason All-Conference player Ed Stephens scores at home, he may hear the famous Austin Peay chant, "Let's go Peay!"

Here is where Value Add ranks each Ohio Valley team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools (including the 129 FBS schools. Updates will be provided here.)

Ohio Valley / 2017 BidHoops 2017-18Football
Belmont115
Murray St.126227
Eastern Kentucky174195
Jacksonville St. 15175101
Tennessee St.265183
Eastern Illinois276174
Tennessee Tech277213
Morehead St.295367
Southeast Missouri St.304234
Austin Peay308246
SIU Edwardsville322
Tennessee Martin323

Here are the top 15 projected players in the conference in order.

Top 15 Ohio Valley PlayersValue AddSchoolHt
Jonathan Stark 26.60Murray St.`6-00
Dylan Windler 36.26Belmont`6-07
Terrell Miller 05.90Murray St.`6-08
Nick Mayo 105.60Eastern Kentucky`6-09
Ed Stephens 15.45Austin Peay`6-02
Byron Hawkins 15.38Murray St.`6-01
Christian Cunningham 314.99Jacksonville St.`6-07
Amanze Egekeze 324.91Belmont`6-08
Denzel Mahoney 344.85Southeast Missouri St.`6-04
Austin Luke 14.80Belmont`6-03
Matthew Butler 14.30Tennessee Martin`6-02
Muusa Dama 254.00Eastern Illinois`6-09
Aleksa Jugovic 43.77Tennessee Tech`6-03
Zach Charles 123.71Eastern Kentucky`6-07
Terrell Lewis 23.55Eastern Illinois`5-07

Ken Pomeroy ranked the Ohio Valley 22nd of 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, which will all be previewed here with notes on which schools are now "basketball" or "football" schools based on which program is stronger this season. Football revenue is much higher, but programs are much more expensive between equipment and the requirement of matching enough women's scholarships in other sports. Therefore some programs forgo FBS football programs to focus on low cost basketball programs as their biggest revenue sport.

Sports IllustratedFox Sports and ESPN have lauded Value Add Basketball for estimating the number of points each college basketball players is worth to his team above a replacement player - similar to baseball WAR (Wins Above Replacement). Massey Ratings is used for the football rankings above.

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