McNeese basketball is dancing yet again, riding a wave through Lake Charles to go back to the NCAA tournament.
No Will Wade? No problem for McNeese, who weathered a coaching change to put up quite the season in the Southland again. The Cowboys are one of the most impressive mid-majors in the sport for the second season in a row, and they’ve got the talent to prove it.
How they got there:
For the first time ever, the Southland Conference made the jump up to a 22-game conference schedule. This meant McNeese had just nine non-conference games on their docket, and their first conference game came on the first day of December. While that game was a shock loss on the road to Incarnate Word, the Cowboys mostly took care of business from that point against Southland opponents, going 19-2 in their final 21 games in-conference.
But that wasn’t enough to secure the one seed in the Southland tournament. Stephen F. Austin, who split the season series with McNeese, only lost one other game against a conference opponent, a questionable home loss to New Orleans. The Lumberjacks earned the top spot with a 20-2 record, setting up a potential crash course with McNeese in the final, with the first two seeds earning byes to the semifinals.
McNeese had to get past UTRGV first, which was no small task. The Vaqueros had won 13 of their past 15 games, including one over McNeese at home. In an instant classic, the Cowboys prevailed 84-80 in triple overtime, making not one, not two, but three game-tying attempts with under a minute to go across regulation and the first and second overtimes. Larry Johnson punctuated the win with a dunk with seconds to go.
Stephen F. Austin needed some late magic of their own to escape Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, but the Cowboys-Lumberjacks title game was inevitable. But this time, it wasn’t close. The Lumberjacks never led in what was essentially a home game for the Cowboys, with the Southland Conference holding the postseason tournament in Lake Charles. McNeese led by as many as 24 in what turned out to be a 76-59 win. Javohn Garcia led both teams with 31 points, and he was named Southland Tournament MVP. Johnson and Tyshawn Archie joined him on the all-tournament team.
General Information:
Team: McNeese
Location: Lake Charles, LA
Record: 28-5 (19-3)
Head Coach: Bill Armstrong (1st season)
What to know about McNeese basketball:
McNeese basketball has some of the most momentum out of any team entering the tournament. The Cowboys haven’t lost since Groundhog Day, when Punxsutawney Phil promised six more weeks of McNeese victories. How are they doing it, outside of rodent magic? The Cowboys are the only team in D-I with a turnover differential better than -200. They force chaos on the defensive end and take care of the ball when they have it. Partially, that’s due to being a decent amount more talented than the average Southland opponent and getting 22 conference games. But even in out-of-conference games, McNeese had a -56 turnover differential with a 7-2 record.
The offense is led by three guards averaging in double figures. Those are the aforementioned members of the Southland All-Tournament Team: Garcia, Johnson, and Archie. The freshman Johnson has been a revelation, breaking Joe Dumars’ freshman scoring record at McNeese that had held for over 40 years. He leads the Cowboys with 17.5 PPG, a mark that’s third in the Southland.
Though he isn’t much of a distributor, Johnson also led the team with 5.5 RPG. Garcia is averaging 12.0 PPG and 1.8 SPG on the defensive side of the ball, while he and Archie both have clips from deep at around 37% on the year. The team’s main distributors are Archie and Garwey Dual. Dual leads the team with 4.3 APG, while Archie has 2.9 APG on the year.
The Cowboys have the most points off turnovers per game out of any D-I school at 21.3. Despite an undersized lineup, they block a high volume of shots as well, ranking sixth in Division I with a 15.8% block percentage over the course of the season. Despite a relatively slow pace, McNeese scores a lot of points on the fast break, a result of the large amount of turnovers forced by the Cowboys’ defense. But the Cowboys do have some glaring weaknesses. They don’t shoot the three well (31.6% on the year) and give up plenty of offensive rebounds to opponents. Against Q1 + Q2 opponents, McNeese is giving up a 41.5% offensive rebounding rate.
NCAA Tournament prediction for McNeese basketball: Round of 32
Seed: 12
This season’s McNeese team really isn’t that far off from last year’s. They’re 2-2 in Q2 games, quite impressive for a Southland team, and played a tournament team, Santa Clara, close for a half. They handled the other mid-majors in their non-conference schedule, including Louisiana, George Washington, Middle Tennessee State, and Rhode Island. While those aren’t the type of teams that McNeese will face in the tournament, a 12 seed needs to at least prove that they can beat the teams they need to and hang with the teams better than them, and McNeese has done that.
With Javohn Garcia healthy (he missed four games in February but returned for the Southland Tournament), this team is operating at full strength. But one issue for any mid-major is size, and that problem doesn’t elude the Cowboys. Of the five players averaging at least 20 MPG for McNeese, none are above 6’5″. In the team’s six games against Q1+Q2 opponents, that trend continued.
McNeese certainly has the backcourt talent to make some waves, but again, their leading rebounder is a 6’4″ guard, and he’s the only player averaging more than 4.0 RPG on the season. Vanderbilt has Jalen Washington and Devin McGlockton, but it isn’t a top-end rebounding team, so the Cowboys should be able to match up just fine with the Commodores. We’ll say McNeese can do it, but a Sweet Sixteen run seems really unlikely unless they meet Troy in the round of 32. You can read more about the Trojans by clicking here!