Under the Radar Game of the Day – Monday, January 5 , 2014: Texas Southern at Southern

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Texas Southern at Southern, 9:00 PM Eastern, ESPNU

It must be January, as tonight kicks off ESPN’s BIG MONDAY coverage (though with a break next week for the football championship game).  There was a time when Big Monday meant a tripleheader of Big East, Big Ten and Big West basketball.  Then conference realignment and new television deals came along, and now it is an ACC-Big 12 doubleheader on ESPN, and a pair of games on ESPNU normally from the MEAC and/or SWAC.  Tonight’s ESPNU coverage begins with West Virginia at Texas Tech, then swings down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Texas Southern takes on Southern University in our UTR Game of the Day.

The problems at Southern U. were well documented on this site last season, as all of their APR data for about a ten year stretch was deemed unusable by the NCAA for pretty much all sports.  The entire athletic program was therefore banned from any postseason play last year.  As the school was never able to reconstruct its data, heading into this season the Jaguars do not have a full four years of APR data to use.  The NCAA utilizes a four year average score, and with a couple of 0’s in for the unusable years, Southern’s APR this season is 489 when it needs to be over 930.  Southern is ineligible again this season and unless the NCAA gives the school some sort of waiver, they are probably looking at receiving at least one more year on the postseason ban list after this one.

The Southern Jaguars enter tonight’s game at 4-11 overall and 1-0 in SWAC.  Their three wins outside of the SWAC were all over non-D1 competition.  Tonight’s opponent only has 4 wins as well, sitting at 4-10 and 1-0 in the SWAC.  However, their three non-SWAC wins were all against D1 opponents — Lamar, Michigan State and Kansas State.  Mike Davis’ Texas Southern Tigers pulled perhaps the biggest upset we have seen in years by heading into East Lansing, Michigan on December 20 and coming out with a six point overtime victory over Tom Izzo’s Spartans.  The Tigers followed that up eight days later with a win over Bruce Weber’s Kansas State Wildcats.  While the Tigers have lost ten games this year, all of their losses have come away from home against some pretty tough competition (Indiana, Gonzaga, Florida, SMU, and Baylor to just name a few).  As a result, despite being six games under .500, Texas Southern holds the best RPI, BPI and KenPom ratings by far in the SWAC and stands out right now as the clear favorite to win the conference.  In fact, with their two big non-conference wins, the Tigers may even have a shot at being the first SWAC team since 1999 to be seeded higher than the 16 line in the NCAA tournament!

As a final note, with Big Monday kicking off tonight, we would be remiss if we did not take a look back at the greatest advertising campaign in the history of ESPN’s college basketball coverage.  Take it away, Mr. Goulet: