Who Won the Week? is a regular column that will outline and discuss three winners and losers from the previous week. The author of this column is Kenny Ocker (@KennyOcker), an Oregon-based sportswriter best known for his willingness to drive (or bike!) anywhere to watch a basketball game.

Sorry about the hiatus. Let’s get on with the show.

Winner: Doug McDermott

Doug McDermott is Blowing Up Again (USA Today)

After coming into the season as one of the top NPOY candidates, the Creighton forward has backed that up on the court. He took that to the next level in the Jays’ convincing wins over Missouri State and Northern Iowa last week. McDermott had a season-high 39 points on the road against the Bears, shooting 15-of-19 from the field and 3-of-4 from three-point range, while also grabbing 10 rebounds. He then turned around and went for 31 points against the Panthers, getting back-to-back 30-point games for the second time this season. For Creighton, tomorrow’s game against fellow conference undefeated Wichita State will be the first of two (and hopefully three, if the MVC Tournament breaks right) match-ups between the two elite teams in the Missouri Valley. And no player is a bigger part of what the Bluejays do than McDermott, whose 24 points per game is second best in the country.

(Related winners: Creighton. Related losers: Nets, because McDermott keeps burning them up; the MVC, in which the Jays are 6-0 so far.)

Loser: Wyoming

The Cowboys were one of the darlings of the non-conference season, remaining as one of the last four unbeatens before leading scorer Luke Martinez broke a bone in his hand during an altercation at a bar in late December. Since then, the wheels have started to fall off the cart for coach Larry Shyatt’s bunch. Wyoming started out Mountain West play by losing on a buzzer-beater to Boise State, and it didn’t get much better last week. The Cowboys went on the road to beat Nevada in Reno, but didn’t put up a point per possession in the 59-48 win. Meanwhile, police reports were released about Martinez’s fight, which said the guard admitted to kicking a defenseless man in the head as he was knocked out on the ground. Then the Cowboys capped off their week by producing one of the most unwatchable games of the season, a 49-36 snooze-fest of a loss at a mediocre Fresno State, in which they shot 24 percent from the field, 5-of-27 from three-point range and an abysmal 7-of-20 from the free throw line. Wyoming has gone from aspiring to get to the NCAA Tournament to a team that needs to quickly right its ship.

(Related winners: The top of the Mountain West, which will benefit from Wyoming’s heretofore nice computer numbers; Fresno State, for shooting 52 percent against what was one of the best defenses in the country. Related losers: Martinez, who is at risk of serving jail time.)

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For our complete list of 2011-12 conference primers working backward from #31 to #1, click here.   

Reader’s Take I

Top Storylines

• Southern & Grambling APR Victims.  When the NCAA released its annual Academic Progress Rate report in May, the SWAC contained two of the five basketball programs facing a postseason ban in 2011-12 as a result of consistently poor scores over several years.  While this news shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed the APR since it was implemented several years ago, the teeth of the rule is finally taking hold on individual institutions.  Southern and Grambling probably were not going to be in a competitive position to make the NCAA Tournament this season anyway, but this is something that each school must take seriously in order to secure their D-I existence.  The two institutions submitted APR improvement plans to the NCAA over the summer, and with good reason — without a considerable short-term jump in scores,  the next penalty is restricted membership in Division I.
• Will the APR Eliminate HBCUs in Division I?  Southern and Grambling’s APR predicament highlights a harrowing situation among the two Division I basketball leagues comprising historically black colleges and universities.  With the APR cut line increasing from 925 to 930 as of next year, and a corresponding postseason penalty for programs failing to make that cut in the future, the SWAC  and MEAC could face an untenable situation where every one of its members is ineligible for postseason play, and ultimately on restricted status.  If the 930 threshold had been in effect last year, for example, only one school — the SWAC’s Alcorn State, with its 4-24 overall record and 944 APR score — would have been eligible for the NCAA Tournament.  The APR has been shown to correlate strongly with African-American enrollment, and at the low-budget HBCUs that comprise the SWAC and the MEAC, this development presents tremendous cause for concern.  Whether this is purposeful or not, we’ll leave for you to decide.

David Ely is an occasional contributor.

Predicted Order of Finish

1. Jackson State (15-3)
2. Arkansas-Pine Bluff (13-5)
3. Alabama State (12-6)
4. Texas Southern (11-7)
5. Alabama A&M (9-9)
6. Prairie View A&M (9-9)
7. Mississippi Valley State (9-9)
8. Grambling State (7-11)
9. Southern (3-15)
10. Alcorn State (2-16)

All-Conference Team

• Junior Treasure (G) — Texas Southern
• Tyrone Hansen (G) — Jackson State
• Savalance Townsend (G) — Arkansas-Pine Bluff
• De’Suan Dixon (F) — Jackson State
• Shannon Behling (F) — Mississippi Valley State

6th Man:

• Cornelius Hester (G) — Alabama A&M

Junior Treasure (with ball) is the best among the bevy of guards featured in the SWAC. (AP/Val Horvath)

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JC of HBCUSportsBlog is the RTC correspondent for the MEAC and SWAC conferences. Click here for all of our 2009-10 Season Preview materials.

Predicted Order of Finish:

1. Alabama State (20-9)
2. Jackson State (16-13)
3. Alabama A&M (15-11)
4. Prairie View (13-16)
5. Mississippi Valley State (13-18)
6. Alcorn State (10-19)
7. Arkansas-Pine Bluff (10-19)
8. Texas Southern (9-20)
   
9. Grambling State (5-21)
10. Southern (5-26)

All-Conference Team:

• Christopher Jones (G) – Prairie View – Purest point guard in the SWAC, but will have to reduce his turnovers for the Panthers to be successful this season.
• Troy Jackson (G) – Alcorn State – Ruthless scorer who also shot better than 40 percent from the field in 08-09.
• Grant Maxey (F) – Jackson State – Versatile forward will likely emerge as the 09-10 SWAC Player of the Year
• Douglas Scott (F) – Southern – Tenacious rebounder, came on late last season with three double-doubles in his last five games.
• Darnell Hugee (C) – Prairie View – If he stays out of foul trouble, could be one of the best post players in Division I basketball.

6th Man. Deandre Hall (G) – Texas Southern – Turnover prone, but can do damage from interior and perimeter.

What You Need to Know.  The SWAC is among the worst conferences in all of Division I basketball. There’s no sugarcoating the lack of talent and the brutal out-of-conference schedules that the SWAC member schools play just to keep their athletic budgets afloat. But what they are lacking in appeal and talent, their upper-echelon teams make up for in competitive drive and great coaching. Alabama State took SEC opponents Auburn and Mississippi to the wire on the road last season before dropping both games by fewer than five points.

Predicted Champion.  Jackson State (NCAA Seed: #16). Jackson State has played second fiddle to Alabama State in the regular season for two years in a row. But while the Tigers return key seniors Grant Maxey and Garrison Johnson, the Hornets of ASU lost a lot in the departure of PG Brandon Brooks and forward Andrew Hayles. The JSU Tigers will prevail in the conference championship, but not without serious tests from the likes of Prairie View and Alabama State.

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RTC typically doesn’t have a lot of SWAC coverage, other than our biweekly correspondent updates on the conference managed faithfully and superbly by HBCUSportsBlog’s inimitable JC.  But thanks to a loyal tipster (h/t Bluejay Basketball), we were alerted to a peculiar situation out of that bottom-dwelling league from a game earlier this week.   Er, almost a game.  From the Monroe (La) News-Star:

The Talladega College (NAIA) men’s basketball team arrived at Grambling’s Assembly Center on Tuesday expecting a game. There was no game to be played.  Talladega coach Matt Cross said the team was initially told that the scheduled 7 p.m. game had been delayed because referees were late in arriving, and 20 minutes later, Grambling officials told him the game was canceled because the Southwestern Athletic Conference had forgotten to schedule the referees.  “I said, ‘Can we reschedule? We’ll just stay another night,'” Cross said. “They said, ‘No, we’ll just cancel.'”

We’ve heard some harebrained excuses over the years (“sorry about that, but can you believe that I contracted malaria this weekend?”; “my ex called me out of the blue from Korea and said he wanted to get back together”; “I’m really just not into to guys anymore”), but this one certainly strains the seams of credulity.  The SWAC forgot to schedule the refs?  And no refs could be found within a day’s drive?  Hmmm….

More Like Grumbling State

Cross, to his credit, smells a dancing Tiger rat in Denmark.

Cross said he suspects there is more to the situation than a scheduling mix-up. He said Grambling just didn’t want to play the game. The Tigers (5-13 overall, 3-4 SWAC) were blown out at home 83-58 by conference rival Jackson State on Saturday, and Talladega already has four wins over SWAC teams this season: Alabama State, Alabama A&M, Southern, and Mississippi Valley State.  “They didn’t want to play the game,” said Cross, a Shreveport native. “They wanted to save the embarrassment.”

So Talladega boarded onto its bus and took the 7-hour trek east back home.  The school will still receive its $2500 guarantee for the game, but can you imagine if, say, Duke showed up at the Dean Dome next month and UNC said, “y’know, we couldn’t find any refs, so you’re just going to have to get on back to Derm.  It’s the ACC’s fault.  See ya!”  Absurd.

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

In case you thought differently, the SWAC is still pulling up the rear in Division I basketball. Just once, you want to associate these hard working teams with other descriptors than “lopsided defeat” or “demoralizing road trip.” But, the SWAC has to make money, and we should all credit them for their hard work in trying to build solid programs.

So let’s take a look at the hardest working conference in America.

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