JC of HBCUSportsBlog is the RTC correspondent for the SWAC and MEAC Conferences.

The big news in college sports this week was national signing day for high school football players. But basketball is king in the MEAC, so we look back on the obvious, the shocking and the downright ugly in this week’s wrap-up.

THIS WEEK – And here come the Coppin State Eagles. Again. Last year’s team ripped off eight of their last nine regular season contests heading in to the MEAC tournament, and you know the rest. They’ve won four in a row and five of their last seven after a murderous 2-13 start. Maybe there is something to taking so many out-of-conference beatings.

While the Eagles are rising, the Bethune-Cookman University Wildcats are falling. The Wildcats were tops in the conference at the outset of conference play, but have lost their last three games at home, the last two to conference bottom feeders Delaware State and the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore.

Here’s what’s in between.

WHAT’S HELPING

• Two of the conference’s worst, Winston-Salem State and Howard, are riding two-game winning streaks. Here’s hoping that the first-round conference tournament games will be as competitive for the lovable losers.
• All but three teams are averaging better than 30 rebounds per contest, which should be the case when all but three teams shoot worse than 45 percent from the field.

WHATS HURTING

• The MEAC is growing fat off of home cooking. Only two teams, Hampton and Delaware State, are below .500 at home. Not a good look for tournament preparation in a conference that doesn’t travel well.
• Almost three-fourths of the conference averages more than 15 turnovers per game? And I thought the worst thing about the MEAC was the conference mascot, Meackie.

WHATS NEXT?

• Morgan St. @ Towson – Saturday, Feb. 21 – Bracket Buster for ESPN, a cross town rivalry for the Bears.
• Coppin St. @ Hampton – Saturday, Feb. 21 – One of the last games for the Eagles, who appear poised for another tournament run.

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 2:22 pm by rtmsf and is filed under Checking In On. Tagged: bethune-cookman, conference check-ins, coppin st, delaware st, hampton, howard, maryland-eastern shore, meac, morgan st, winston-salem st. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.