Russell Burnett is the RTC correspondent for the Southland Conference.

Predicted Order of Finish

East Division

1. Southeastern Louisiana (13-3)
2. Nicholls State (10-6)
3. Lamar (9-7)
4. Northwestern State (6-10)
5. McNeese State (5-11)
6. Central Arkansas (3-13)

West Division

1. Stephen F. Austin (13-3)
2. Sam Houston State (12-4)
3. Texas State (9-7)
4. UTSA (7-9)
5. A&M-Corpus Christi (6-10)
6. Texas-Arlington (3-13)

All-Conference Team (key stats from last season in parentheses)

• Anatoly Bose (F) – Nicholls State (21.1 ppg, 86 three-pointers made)
• Gilberto Clavell (F) – Sam Houston (17.1 ppg, 6.4 rpg)
• A.J. Stewart (C) – Texas State (5.7 PPG in 2008-09 for Kentucky)
• Anthony Miles (G) – Lamar (14 ppg, 3.0 apg)
• Devin Gibson (G) – UT-San Antonio (12.5 ppg, 4.4 apg)

Sixth Man

• Cameron Johnson (F) – Texas State (14.6 ppg, 7.9 rpg)

Impact Newcomer

• A.J. Stewart (F) – Texas State pulled in several transfers, but none bigger than the 6’9 Kentucky transfer. Having played in 29 games for the Wildcats as a sophomore, Stewart could have a big impact in a league not known for fielding a plethora of big men. Stewart led Arlington Country Day (Fla.) High School to three straight state championships.

A.J. Stewart, formerly a bench player with Kentucky, hopes to celebrate an expanded role with Texas State. (ukwildcatcountry.com)

What You Need to Know

• The Southland is a two-division league and made a change during the offseason. Stephen F. Austin moved from the East Division to the West and Lamar jumped from the West to the East.
• The Merrell Center in Katy is the site of the 2011 Southland Conference Basketball Tournament. This is the third straight year the tournament has been played at a neutral site.
• The five-year transition process for Central Arkansas‘ athletic department is over. The school has now gained Division I active membership and will be eligible for postseason play in the Southland Conference and at the national level.
• There was a shake-up on the coaching front of a couple of teams in the offseason. Central Arkansas hired former Razorback great Corliss Williamson as its head coach, while Sam Houston State promoted assistant Jason Hooten after longtime coach Bob Marlin took over the helm at Louisiana-Lafayette.

Predicted Champion

Stephen F. Austin (NCAA seed: #15). The Lumberjacks were beaten in the tournament championship game by rival Sam Houston State last year. Head Coach Danny Kaspar always has his team in contention and this year his team-oriented style of play could reap benefits as the conference is void of any big-time NBA caliber talent. It could be a toss-up with Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, but both teams should come out of the West bloodied, but not beaten.

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We’re back with another thrilling edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite where we try to cover every single game on TV. Since we have only two people working on BGTD, we appreciate any reader tips on what games everyone should be watching since there are so many on TV and the Internet. For a rundown of the games today, check out today’s Set Your Tivos.

11:40 AM: ESPN GameDay is live from Spokane site of the Memphis-Gonzaga game tongiht at 9 PM. The crowd is fairly small, but I’ll give the Bulldog fans a break since it started at 8 AM local time on a Saturday morning at a school with just 4,515 undergraduates. I’m still waiting for a basketball GameDay to match a college football GameDay in terms of attendance and crazy fans. Looking at the schedule, I’m going to have go with February 21st when Oklahoma plays Texas in Austin, TX as the ESPN GameDay where the fans actually show up.

Noon: Some great work by the ESPN camera crew making Philadelphia look like something other a dump. The Syracuse-Villanova game should be one of the better ones today with both teams being in the 2nd tier in the Big East after UConn, Pittsburgh, and Louisville. The jury is still out on Marquette after last night’s debacle. Like we said watch the Jonny Flynn versus Scottie Reynolds match-up. The Arinze Onuaku injury could be big particularly with Dante Cunningham on the inside.

12:40 PM: Sorry for the delay in posting, but we’re having some problems with WordPress. Anyways, Villanova is absolutely destroying Syracuse right now. A basket by Cunningham stretches the lead to 21 at 36-15. It might be a while before we have another update on this game unless the Orange make a run. If the game continues like this, Jim Boeheim‘s squad will fall out of the top 25 leaving just 5 Big East teams in the rankings.

1:00 PM: The ESPN announcers just said that Donovan McNabb played some basketball when he was at Syracuse. Either he had some ridiculous intramural basketball career that I’m not aware of or they just assume that every mobile black QB was a two-sports star. I’m guessing it is the latter.

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Lot of good links today with many of them follow-ups of stories we have reported on in the past.

• Apparently the Miami coaches were onto something when they suspended Eddie Rios indefinitely earlier this month because he was arrested yesterday afternoon on charges of burglary and grant theft.
• I’m sure you remember Aubrey Coleman‘s “curbing” of Chase Budinger‘s face from this weekend and his subsequent 1-game suspension. Well, things have gotten messy as apparently Coleman and Houston’s athletic department have been getting threatening e-mails filled with racial slurs and the FBI has been called in. Side note: I like how Houston coach Tom Penders is blaming ESPN for its editing of the video claiming that it is the cause of the backlash against Coleman.
• Tubby Smith is not leaving Minnesota (at least not for Alabama). Anthony Grant can continue to sit next to his phone.
• Interesting article by Luke Winn about Wake Forest’s James Johnson‘s fighting background. All I know is that if there is a “Malice at the Palace” moment with Wake this year, I’m taking the Demon Deacons in that one.
• Speaking of Wake, Dino Gaudio appears to be a big fan of the Pomeroy Ratings and other voodoo mathematics.
• Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette surveyed 50 media members for their picks for the National Player of the Year at this point in the season. Like Michael, I haven’t seen much stuff done on this yet. Look for a running column similar to this out of Rush the Court in the near future.
• Kelvin Sampson is still complaining about the NCAA’s penalty even though he is in the NBA now. Let it go, Kelvin. Let it go. . .
• A fairly long piece talking about the effect of moving the 3-point line back a foot. Summary: It has decreased the number of 3-point shots only marginally (18.42 per game from 19.07 last year) and decreased 3-point percentage slightly (34.32% from 35.23% last year).
• Vegas Watch with an interesting piece on the impact of seeding in the NCAA tournament.
• Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt offers his thoughts on the prep-to-pro issue. While I agree with him on some stuff I am not sure how you could legally differentiate a Lebron James from a Kwame Brown or worse yet a kid who entered the draft, but was not selected.
• Seth Davis plays “Jigsaw Man” looking at a dozen top 25 teams, identifying their weakness, and picking out a player who does not play on that team that could eliminate the weakness. Interestingly theoretical exercise, but I’m not that sure what to do with it. Example: NJIT. Weakness = Talent/Inability to win (more than 1 game in a row). Missing piece: UNC’s or UConn’s players.
• Speaking of SI writers, where is Grant Wahl’s annual “Magic 8”? I hope rtmsf’s “deconstruction” of last year’s Magic 8 (and subsequent e-mail conversation about the Magic 8, life, and haircare products) did not convince Wahl to give up on writing about college basketball.
• File this one under “Jokes that I would really like to make, but can’t. . .” Jin Soo Kim, the first Korean to earn a D1 basketball scholarship, has been ruled academically ineligible at Maryland.
• Patrick Stevens of The Washington Times with an interesting list of the D1 coaches with the longest tenure. Perhaps it should not be that surprising that only 3 of the coaches in the top 10 come from major programs with all the trouble Gary Williams has been having.

Ed. note – Check out our Boom Goes the Dynamite post covering all of today’s big games until 6pm EDT tonight, when our on-site coverage of ESPN GameDay will continue.

After my first attempt at trying to live blog earlier this week during the Boston College-Wake Forest game, I decided to head down to Chapel Hill to to cover tomorrow’s season-opening ESPN GameDay game (Miami at UNC). All the big names (Dick Vitale, Bobby Knight, Erin Andrews, Digger Phelps, Jay Bilas, etc.) will be there so it should be a big night. RTC will be courtside to bring the action to you (if your big-screen HD wasn’t enough) along with answering whatever (appropriate) questions you may have for coaches, players, and TV personalities. I’ll have access to the media room, courtside reporters, post-game press conferences, and the locker rooms so if you have any questions, post them in the comment section throughout the day and I will try our best to get you the answers.

One early (random) note: I ran into some of the ESPN GameDay crew a few hours ago. It looks like most of them were support staff, but I did notice that Howie Schwab was there, who technically is support staff too. I guess might be considered a F-list celebrity after his now defunct TV show “Stump the Schwab”. Apparently Howie wasn’t sure how to get to his hotel (out of respect for their privacy I’ll avoid posting it online). Being a good Samaritan, I decided to help them out since they knew the name of the hotel and I had an iPhone. I offered to look it up for them on my iPhone, but was completely ignored because apparently the Schwab is above talking to the common folk.  I guess Deadspin was right. (To be fair one of the other guys acknowledged my existence briefly then followed the Schwab.) Hopefully the other media members will be a little more receptive tomorrow night. Feel free to leave “Stump the Schwab” jokes in the comment section.

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News & Notes.

• Miami (FL)’s Eddie Rios was suspended indefinitely for the second time this season for a violation of team rules.  Missouri’s Leo Lyons was also suspended indefinitely relating to his arrest for failure to pay an outstanding traffic ticket.   Pay your tickets, kiddies.
• Billy Packer (where’s he been?) and Bob Knight plan on doing their own show on FSN during March Madness between filling out parlay cards at the Wynn Las Vegas this year.
• LMU’s Bill Bayno resigned due to medical reasons; he will be replaced by assistant coach Max Good (currently 1-11 this season).

The First of Many Ginormous Mondays.

Louisville 87, Notre Dame 73 (OT). This was a fantastic game, and the third in a row that came down the last possession of regulation for the battle-tested Cards (who won all three).  The Big East is going to be like this all year long, and the teams that can make plays in the last two minutes will be sitting at 11-7 and staring at a top four NCAA seed, and those that don’t will be at 7-11 and needing a nice run in the Big East Tournament to get back on the bubble.  Terrence Williams and Luke Harangody were both pretty much unstoppable in a mano-a-mano passion play that rivaled anything we’ve seen in a while.  T-Will blew up the stat sheet, going for 24/16/8 assts/3 stls, while Harangody showcased a variety of spins and fadeaway jumpers in a 28/13 night.  Both teams stepped up their games defensively down the stretch, as Louisville outscored ND 3-2 in the last seven minutes.  Harangody in particular didn’t score a single point during that period and overtime.  Louisville moved to 3-0 in the conference, with #1 Pitt coming to Freedom Hall on Saturday.  It’s amazing to think that a mere two weeks ago everyone was writing the Cards off, including us.  A couple of final notes on this game – the Earl Clark slam “over everyone in the building,” according to Jay Bilas, was phenomenal (see below).  It really seemed as if his arms were something like the trees in Lord of the Rings on that dunk.

Also, the final play of regulation where ND threw the ball into the backcourt did not appear from our view to be a backcourt violation as it was called by the ref.  It was a harmless error from Louisville’s perspective, but how amazing would that ending have been if T-Will had ended the game on a wild play like that?

Oklahoma 78, Texas 63. What was most surprising about this game was just how uncompetitive Texas was throughout.  Texas couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn (34%), and AJ Abrams was the chief culprit (8-27 incl. 3-15 from three).  Blake Griffin was his usual self, going for 20/10, but he was assisted by three other Sooners in double figures.  Honestly, we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of production for Oklahoma outside of Griffin/Warren, but it hasn’t happened yet.  Jeff Capel really has this team playing well.

Other Games of Mild Interest. Not much on the slate tonight, but Davidson and Steph Curry were in action.

• Davidson 70, Appalachian St. 52. Curry Watch – 16/6 assts for Curry on 7-13 shooting in a road win.