Friday, September 22, 2017

Jalan West Given 7th Year for Quest for All-American Status and 1st Southland Title Over Stephen F. Austin

Sam Houston State students are locked in on a powerhouse FCS football team, but weaker football programs at Northwestern State and Lamar hope to deny Stephen F. Austin from the basketball title after years of dominance. Lamar relies on a great trio, while Christmas came early for Northwestern State when All-American candidate Jalan West was given another season after his crushing injury last year.

Despite TJ Holyfield's status as a Value Add preseason All-Conference player, Stephen F. Austin could fail to win the title for a second straight year after finally being dethroned by New Orleans last year. We doubt New Orleans will actually fall this far, but with only five players in the system with projections, here is where Value Add ranks each Southland team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools. Updates will be provided here.


Team - 2017 SeedHoopsFootball
Lamar139272
Stephen F. Austin161240
Northwestern St.181247
Southeastern Louisiana192221
Abilene Christian212238
Texas A&M Corpus Chris225
Incarnate Word241310
Central Arkansas248
Houston Baptist260291
Sam Houston St.303109
McNeese St.319176
Nicholls St.326158
New Orleans 16335

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



Top 15 Southland PlayersValue AddSchoolHt
Jalan West 128.13Northwestern St.`5-10
Ehab Amin 46.40Texas A&M Corpus Christi`6-04
Nick Garth 35.17Lamar`6-00
Jordan Howard 15.14Central Arkansas`5-11
TJ Holyfield 224.70Stephen F. Austin`6-08
Colton Weisbrod 214.50Lamar`6-05
Josh Ibarra 444.17Houston Baptist`6-11
Jalin Hart 13.62Incarnate Word`5-11
Jalone Friday 213.60Abilene Christian`6-09
Marlain Veal 03.54Southeastern Louisiana`5-09
Shawn Johnson 413.50Incarnate Word`6-05
Moses Greenwood 133.14Southeastern Louisiana`6-07
Zjori Bosha 123.04Lamar`6-05
James Currington 233.01Southeastern Louisiana`6-07
John Dewey 113.00Sam Houston St.`6-00

Ken Pomeroy ranked the Southland as the 27th best 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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