Sun Belt Slant: Southern Miss, Louisiana men, Troy women pulling away

Welcome back, fellow college basketball fanatics. After a weeklong Aaron Rodgers-esque retreat, I’m back to dive into an exciting last two weekends of Sun Belt men’s and women’s basketball.

Sun Belt Conference: Fit two be Tted

The calendar has flipped to a new month, we’ve wrapped up the first weekend of February and two teams find themselves in the league’s driver’s seat: Southern Miss and Louisiana.

All season long, I’ve said the Ragin’ Cajuns look like one of the best teams in the league, but after this past weekend, Bob Marlin’s group looks like the best team in the league. Full-stop.

Louisiana has won 10-straight, their second-longest win streak in school history, and perhaps no win has been more impressive during this stretch than the Saturday night mauling of Marshall.

The Ragin’ Cajuns man-handled the Herd, out-rebounding the country’s eighth-best glass cleaners by 22. Arizona transfer Jordan Brown had the game of his life, piling up 26 points with 20 rebounds, the first 20-20 game by a Cajun in seven seasons. They shot 50 percent from the field for the 12th time this year.

However, nothing was more impressive than their defense.

Louisiana held the SBC’s third-leading scorer Andrew Taylor to just 7 points. Kam Curfman scored just 9 points, short of his 12.2 points per game average. As a whole, the Herd shot 38 percent, the fifth-lowest allowed by the Ragin’ Cajuns this year.

Pretty good for the second-worst scoring defense in the conference, eh?

If Louisiana can fine-tune its defense heading into tournament time, look out. They already have the scoring balance (Themus Fulks and Greg Williams combined for 32 points Saturday) to hang with anyone, but defense wins championships.

“You’ve got to score on the road to be able to overcome some things,” Marlin told me last week. “Offense is important, we know that. But defense, that’s something we need to improve to get to where we want to be at.”

Only one team stands in Louisiana’s way of winning a regular-season title: Southern Miss.

The Golden Eagles have an identical 10-2 league record but lost by 14 the last time they matched up with the Ragin’ Cajuns. The two meet again Thursday night in Reed Green Coliseum.

If USM can win, it would not only put them alone in first place but also cement the Golden Eagles as one of the country’s best turnaround stories this season.

Women of Troy

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Troy entered Sun Belt play 5-6 overall. They lost Preseason Player of the Year Felmas Koranga to a season-ending injury. SBC newbies Southern Miss even beat them in their own gym in the league opener.

Nothing was going right for Chanda Rigby’s bunch.

Until it was.

Since that loss to Southern Miss, the Trojans have won nine of their last 10 games, including a one-point win Saturday over a red-hot Louisiana team. Thanks to their ability to flip the switch, and JMU’s recent struggles, Troy finds themselves in a familiar spot: atop the Sun Belt, a league they’ve won five of the last seven years.

“We’ve had to have a complete shift,” Rigby told me earlier this year. “It’s almost like we’ve had two completely different seasons. We made a really, really tough pre-conference schedule, four, five Power conference teams. We used those as learning experiences so when we got into conference play, it really feels like a whole new team.”

Those experiences have clearly paid off. Troy enters the week two full games ahead of JMU in first place and has a manageable slate the rest of the way; five of their next six opponents are .500-or-worse.

If Troy comes out of that unscathed, expect to see the Trojans back in the Big Dance again.

Blocking out the Sun

Interestingly enough, the SBC is home to four of the country’s top-15 shot blockers this season.

Marshall’s Micah Handlogten, South Alabama’s Kevin Samuel, ULM’s Victor Bafutto and App State’s Justin Abson have all turned away 50 or more shots this year, with Handlogten’s 62 ranking 6th in the country.

Between Marshall, App State, South Alabama and Old Dominion, four SBC teams rank in the top-100 nationally in team blocks.

The Sun Belt might be the 3rd-highest scoring conference in America this year, but defense is aplenty.

Kemper’s cardiac kids

“Together!”

That’s been the rallying cry of Marshall women’s basketball this season. And together, they’ve come back to win again, and again, and again.

Saturday, they trailed Georgia State by 16 points in the second half. When the buzzer sounded, the Herd had won by five.

This follows a Thursday game against App State where they trailed by as many as 14 points, only to come out on top in the end.

“We show grit and toughness late in games, that is part of who we are,” head coach Tony Kemper said. “It is always good to win, when you are deep in the season, it is not always going to be easy, obviously this one wasn’t. But to still find a way to be good when it matters is an important skill that we have.”

The win over the Panthers marked the 10th comeback win for Marshall this year and the 9th time they’ve won trailing by double-digits. The Herd have now won five-straight games, their longest conference win streak since 2008-2009.

With a defense that gives up less than 60.0 points per game (ranked 67th nationally), and a never-say-die attitude, this year’s Herd team isn’t one you want to face in the conference tournament.

Expect Marshall to make some noise in Pensacola later this year.

‘Chants Up!

I talked with Coastal Carolina women’s coach Kevin Pederson earlier this week. He told me about his jump from DII, coaching under Rick Barnes and where has been his favorite Sun Belt stop so far.

You can catch the full interview on my weekly Sun Belt podcast, Under the Sun, on Apple and Spotify.