Men vs. Women

It’s been mentioned several times (and I actually would have agreed) that the SLC is much stronger in men’s basketball than women’s basketball. But, in DMc’s Column today he gives the SOS and RPI for both programs this season. We knew that the SOS was weak. He goes on to tell us the conference’s RPI standing. It’s not high for either, but I don’t think many of us realized just how close the two are.

The Sugar Bears’ RPI (one guideline for postseason play in the future) is currently 188 among 346 Division I teams. But their strength of schedule is 344 out of 346 teams. The Southland Conference is ranked 27th out of 31 Division I conferences.

. . .

The UCA men, who are on the verge of a 20-loss season, are ranked 329 among 345 Division I teams with a strength-of-schedule rating of 298… the Southland 26th among the 31 Division I conferences.

MBB Transition Update

Just an update to see what has been going on with the other 11 teams in transition since the BearBackers meeting in late January. The table is sorted by how many years into the transition process the teams are.

Team	Overall	Conf	Non-D1 Teams*	Yrs in transition
Cal-Bakersfield	7-20	ind	0	4
Central Arkansas	8-19	2-11	4	4
Winston-Salem State	11-15	ind	5	4
Florida Gulf Coast	8-20	5-14	0	3
Houston Baptist	7-19	6-2	0	3
North Carolina Central	7-21	ind	4	3
Presbyterian	5-24	2-14	1	3
South Carolina Upstate	5-22	5-13	0	3
Bryant	1-27	1-15	0	2
North Dakota	8-18	5-13	3	2
Seattle	14-14	ind	0	2
South Dakota	15-9	6-1	4	2

* – This is the number of opponents played that are not in Division I.

Baseball loss, SB Dinner

BASEBALL
Well, the baseball team was able to quickly reschedule their Sunday rain out, but the result was a loss to UALR, 9-5. The UALR starter coasted through 6-2/3 and left with a 9-2 lead. The Bear pitching wasn’t great but was also hurt by two errors leading to three unearned runs. The bats came alive in the 8th, cutting the lead to 9-5, and the bases were still loaded. But a flyout ended the threat.

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WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
You’ve seen the announcement; now you can see the artwork. Help support the women’s basketball program and meet the ladies who have made the biggest turnaround in the country this season.

The week that is (2.22.10)

Four things going on in Conway this week if you only count baseball once:

1. Women’s Basketball – Wednesday night @7 against Nicholls (4-20, 1-11)
   Sugar Bears won by 7 at home in the first meeting over a month ago. A loss at home would be a huge let down.
2. Baseball - Friday @3, Saturday and Sunday @1 all against Saint Louis (2-1)
   The Bears haven’t played SLU since 2007 when they swept them at home. The Billikens had their fourth game of the weekend rained out. Before that they beat UAPB and lost to UALR. For your weather report, it looks like the highs for the weekend should be the low 50s.
   Side note: The recently added UALR game Tuesday @4 is close enough to be considered a home game.
3. Men’s Basketball – Saturday @4 against SELA (15-10, 7-5)
   The men only lost by 7 on the road. SELA’s coming off a 10-point home win over SFA, but they play at Corpus Christi on Wednesday before facing the Bears.
4. Women’s Tennis – Saturday @10 against McNeese State
   This will be the second SLC opponent for the Sugar Bears after losing to Corpus Christi. McNeese is 4-1 and has not played a conference opponent.

Away from home:

1. Softball plays Mississippi Valley Wednesday @4 and then stays in Mississippi for a tournament in Hattiesburg over the weekend.
2. Men’s basketball plays Nicholls Wednesday @6:30.
3. Women’s basketball plays SELA Saturday @3.
4. There’s even a spring game for the men’s soccer team on Saturday against Tyler Junior College in Texas. This will be their second game this spring if they were able to get in the game yesterday. If you know what happened or if nothing happened, leave a comment below.

It was time

So, we’ve had some pretty old stuff out there for a while now. What that meant is that we had become easily hackable – which most of you had found out through your virus protection.

We decided that we’d had enough, decided on WordPress and updated the message board. Obviously things look a lot different. There’s still quite a bit of stuff we need to finish. But, we’ve been putting off a “redesign” for a year or two, so we decided to go with an incremental approach and get started instead of trying to do everything all at once, getting delay and putting it off for another year or two.

There you have it. Here’s the new site. Don’t get too attached to anything because it could all change in the next few weeks.