By Aidan Joly
Hold on tight, the WAC is coming.
A league announcement on Thursday shifted the landscape of mid-major college basketball as it was announced that five schools (four in Texas); Southern Utah, Abilene Christian, Lamar, Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston State will be joining the league as it makes a comeback in football and adds depth in basketball in a big way.
According to multiple reports, the four Texas schools will likely join the league this summer and Southern Utah will join for the 2022-23 school year. All four Texas schools are joining from the Southland, while Southern Utah comes in from the Big Sky.
Chicago State, a big outlier in the league is leaving the league voluntarily in June 2022 according to a press release. The school has struggled mightily financially in recent years and recently opted out of the remainder of the basketball season. For now, it seems like they are hoping to stay in Division I.
This move is mostly about FCS football, also considering that UT Rio Grande Valley is heavily exploring starting a football program.
But let’s talk basketball.
First of all, on the surface, New Mexico State finally has more than one or two schools to really compete with in the WAC. The Aggies have gone 116-20 in league play since the start of the 2011-12 season and have won the league all but one of those years, not including this past spring when the tournament was canceled.
On Friday afternoon, New Mexico State’s KenPom rank was No. 115 and the second team is Grand Canyon at No. 141 but then not another until No. 232, which is UTRGV.
The new five stack up as follows: No. 124 Abilene Christian, No. 166 Stephen F. Austin, No. 186 Southern Utah, No. 198 Sam Houston State and No. 325 Lamar.
The WAC is getting two of the best Southland teams as well as a Southern Utah program that has turned some heads in recent years. Add that to Grand Canyon heavily focusing on basketball in their first handful of years at Division I and Cal Baptist and Dixie State, both still pretty new to D1 as well, are showing signs that they will become good programs in the future.
Simply put, the odds of it becoming a multi-bid league just went up dramatically.
The league will be splitting into two divisions with some sort of schedule layout that hasn’t been decided on yet. The league said that they expect the conference tournament to stay in Las Vegas, but it shouldn’t be surprising if that changes considering the league will have six of its 13 schools in Texas. The other lineup as three in Utah and one each in Washington, California, Arizona and New Mexico.
As for travel and geography, it should be relatively easy. 2021-22 will be kind of a strange year with Chicago State still hanging around but it gets easier after that. Dixie State and Southern Utah will be natural rivals as the schools are a 45-minute bus ride apart and Utah Valley is less than three hours north of Southern Utah.
Grand Canyon isn’t far from the two Utah schools and neither is Cal Baptist. With Chicago State leaving, Seattle will be the most isolated team in the league. Games between New Mexico State and Grand Canyon are always big because both teams are good, and there will be more big games with good teams now. Six teams all in the same state helps, too.
Of course, all of this has to hold up and time will tell if that happens, but the future of the WAC, a league that was on the verge of folding less than a decade ago, is very bright.
AJ Hoops 