Louisville, Maryland Men's Basketball Ready for New Challenge
The conference realignment madness has subdued for now, but there are a handful of teams getting ready to tip off their first basketball season in a new conference. Many of these teams stepping up to better conferences are years and years away from even being considered as possible contenders, but there some who will change the landscape of their conference right away.
Maryland and Rutgers are joining the Big Ten, although it is just Maryland who will make things interesting in their new conference in 2014-2015. Of course the Terrapins have a long history of basketball success, but they are pretty good right now too. Behind athletic wings Dez Wells and Jake Layman, Coach Mark Turgeon should have this team not just battling for a spot in the NCAA Tournament, but for a Big Ten title. Most basketball betting sites have teams like Wisconsin, Michigan State, Michigan and Ohio State favored in the Big Ten, but the Terps give good value right behind that group.
Like Maryland, Louisville is not favored to win the league in their first season in the new conference, but they have the talent to seriously compete. Louisville won the NCAA Tournament in 2013 and reached the Sweet Sixteen in 2014. Coach Rick Pitino once again has the tools to make a deep tournament run and push Duke and North Carolina for an ACC title.
Perhaps the most interesting conference changes as far as impacting this year’s basketball campaign come in the A-10, Conference USA and Summit League. The A-10 has been a great league and now they add Davidson to the mix. Davidson has been dominating the Southern Conference for a long, long time. This is not the best Davidson squad in recent years, but they are good enough to battle with VCU, Dayton, Umass and the other top teams in the conference during the 2014-2015 campaign. The ever changing C-USA adds Western Kentucky a team that has also spent some time dominating a smaller conference, in this case the Sun Belt. The Hilltoppers should be one of the better teams in a conference that is down this year, especially with East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa headed to the American Athletic Conference. Oral Roberts returns to the Summit League after a brief foray in the Southland. While they were gone, the Summit League got better and ORU got worse. The conference has boasted some very good teams from Denver and North Dakota State. Most recently it was NDSU that beat Oklahoma in last year’s NCAA Tournament. Now ORU has to throw themselves right back into it and hope they have not dropped behind the teams in the Summit League.
