Been an awful six weeks or so in college hoops, just utterly backward. But at least now I don't have to worry about teams' motivation as we try to salvage the year. Lehigh has been pretty decent to me this campaign, and I certainly rank the Patriot League above Prairie View's SWAC. And the Panthers were just eighth in the SWAC before storming to the conference tournament title. They played 13 non-con games and went 5-8. Four of those wins were over non-Division I programs.
It's the First Four of the NCAA Tournament at Dayton, Ohio, with Lehigh against Prairie View A&M. Lehigh is on a run of winning six straight games, covering five of them, and has stayed under the last three. Prairie View is on a run of seven straight wins and covering their last 10 games. That's 21 covers on the season for Prairie View in their 31 lined games. The area I'm looking at is the total under which I made 136; the send-out was 146.5, and it's down to 142.5. Prairie View has stayed under seven straight games, coinciding with playing their best ball. Just the under.
Two teams that finished out the year strong meet in the play in today with Lehigh and Prairie View A&M. The Panthers have won nine out of their last ten games, but had the harder conference tournament path. They played four games in five days up through this past Saturday, while Lehigh played three conference tournament games in seven days. That’s a factor as well as the SWAC not being as strong as the past that has won the play-in four out of the last five years.
