CUSA Hoops: The Mid-Major You NEED To Know Before March Madness!

Conference USA basketball is heating up as we head into the final stretch of the regular season. For those unfamiliar, CUSA is a relatively young conference, just entering its fourth decade. And like many conferences these days, it's seen its share of changes. After a year with 10 teams, CUSA expanded to 12 this academic year, though it'll contract again in the coming seasons as schools depart for greener pastures in the Mountain West and Sun Belt. But let's focus on what matters now: the race to March Madness.

CUSA Hoops: The Mid-Major You NEED To Know Before ...

With a dozen teams vying for glory in 2024-25, the stakes are high. The reality of mid-major basketball is that the automatic bid is everything. Historically, at-large bids have been incredibly difficult to come by for Conference USA teams, both on the men's and women's sides. And, frankly, this year isn't shaping up to be any different. So, who's in the driver's seat?

On the men's side, Liberty and Sam Houston are currently leading the pack. They hold the 94th and 95th spots, respectively, in the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) rankings. Western Kentucky is the only other CUSA team even sniffing the Top 150. What's interesting is that, while the conference lacks those "bubble" teams that are right on the edge of making the tournament, it also seems to avoid those truly struggling, bottom-of-the-barrel programs. Only Delaware resides in the bottom 100 of Division I. Still, Liberty, despite being the conference's frontrunner, almost certainly needs that automatic bid to punch their ticket to the Big Dance.

The numbers don't lie. Liberty leads in Wins Above Bubble (WAB), a metric that measures how much a team wins against teams on the bubble of the NCAA Tournament. But, overall, they rank just 62nd with a WAB score of -1.48. With limited games remaining against top-tier competition, it's unlikely they'll achieve a positive WAB score. Sam Houston faces an even steeper climb at -4.24. An outright victory for either team isn't a given, though. There's a good amount of parity in the conference, which makes things interesting.

Turning to the women's side, Louisiana Tech is on a serious roll. They've strung together an impressive 14 consecutive wins after dropping their first conference game. No other team is even close to that kind of streak. The Lady Techsters are absolutely dominating, leading the conference in both points scored (70.4) and points allowed (56.3) per game in conference play. Their overall season stats are nearly top-50 nationally, if you can believe it. They're lighting it up from the field, too, boasting the best 2-point (50.9%) and 3-point (37.5%) shooting percentages in Conference USA play. The rebounding, however... well, that's a story for another article. For now, keep an eye on Louisiana Tech – they're the team to beat.