Sun Belt

Sun Belt takes basketball tournaments to ‘Big Easy’

By Roy Ockert Jr.

March 16, 2013

After five years the Sun Belt Conference logo is coming up from the floor of the Summit Arena in Hot Springs. The final basketball tournament championship games were played there Monday as the Sun Belt has decided to take its postseason competition to New Orleans, where the league maintains its headquarters.

That may make things easier for Commissioner Karl Benson and his staff, but it won’t be a good thing for conference members. The SBC last held its basketball tournaments there in 2002.

Back then, New Orleans wasn’t a neutral site since one of the league members was the University of News Orleans, but the Privateers had trouble filling the seats at Lakefront Arena, which has almost 9,000 seats. In 2009-10 New Orleans moved to the non-scholarship division of the NCAA and dropped out of the Sun Belt.

The arena sustained extensive damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and closed for three years. Since then it has undergone more than $8 million in renovations, including an exterior metal facade and sloped roof panels.

However, the practice of the Sun Belt during most of its years has been to move the basketball tournaments around, as often as annually. Not since 1995-97, when Barton Coliseum in Little Rock was the site, had the tournaments been in the same place for three straight years.

That changed, though, when the SBC signed a 3-year agreement with Hot Springs starting in 2009. After the 2011 tournament the agreement was extended for three more years.

For some reason Benson wanted to take the tournaments back to New Orleans so he got Hot Springs to let the conference out of the final year and signed a new 3-year agreement to use Lakefront.

I’ll admit some prejudice about holding the SBC postseason events in Hot Springs, my hometown. I still go back there often. But New Orleans is a good tourist attraction again, and I’ll enjoy going a trip to the “Big Easy.”

Hot Springs has also given teams from Arkansas State University and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock the feel of a home-court advantage. Certainly both schools have had the largest fan followings of any schools competing there.

However, ASU teams have not taken advantage, never having reached the finals at Hot Springs. UALR has fared better, winning the men’s title in 2011. Its women’s teams have finished first or second in every tournament at Hot Springs, but I suspect that might have happened anywhere else.

Louisiana-Lafayette fans probably won’t see Lakefront as a neutral court.

The fact is that Hot Springs has many advantages for the Sun Belt. One is that setting up a secondary court next door to the Summit has allowed both tournaments to be completed comfortably in four days with all schools competing.

Hot Springs is more centrally located than New Orleans for the conference membership as it has existed the past five years. Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, Lafayette and North Texas teams have also drawn well there. You won’t have such broad representation at New Orleans, especially with Middle Tennessee and North Texas exiting the Sun Belt next year.

Hot Springs officials were magnanimous in allowing the Sun Belt to break the agreement. They could do so because they know they have fine facilities in an attractive location, and someone else will be glad to take up the slack.

At least the conference commissioner will have a short drive to work.

Benson has his work cut out, though. With four teams pulling out of the league this year and three coming in, one of them a non-football school, the Sun Belt is down to 10 members, eight with football teams.

The new schools — Georgia State, Texas State and Texas-Arlington — all have enrollments of 30,000-plus, but they haven’t been exactly stellar in athletics.

Benson said at a press conference last week that he expects the conference to take in another new member within 30 days. He also said the league is considering whether to move up to 12 football schools, separate them into divisions and hold a championship game. That would mean two 7-team basketball divisions.

(Try to run two 14-team basketball tournaments in a single arena in four days.)

Benson identified New Mexico State and Idaho as other institutions interested in joining the Sun Belt. Both have solid credentials, but they would add greatly to travel requirements for all members.

In December the Appalachian State sports blog made a public records request for Sun Belt-related documents and came up with an e-mail from Benson listing Idaho and New Mexico State as possible additions, along with these schools: Appalachian State, Delaware, Georgia Southern, Illinois State, Jacksonville State, James Madison, Lamar, Liberty, Missouri State, Richmond, Sam Houston State, Towson and Tennessee-Chattanooga.

Unfortunately, only Idaho and New Mexico State play at the Football Bowl Subdivision level. All others are at the Football Championship Subdivision level, formerly known as I-AA.

Furthermore, officials at Western Kentucky and A-State have indicated that they’re keeping their eyes open to other options. With all the realignment going on in college athletics, it’s hard to keep up with who’s coming and who’s going in the various conferences.

Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.