2018-19 Sun Belt Women's Basketball Weekly News and Notes:
Week 1 Release (PDF) | Standings | Composite Schedule | Stats | Championship Information | Media Guide | Record Book

AROUND #SUNBELTWBB
Sun Belt and ESPN Reach Long-Term Agreement
This past March, the league announced a continuation of its relationship with ESPN that is the most significant and extensive multimedia rights agreement in conference history. This new agreement includes enhancements in the current agreement, which runs through 2019-20, most notably an increase of men’s and women’s basketball games on ESPN platforms.  The number of men’s basketball contests available will jump to a minimum of 100 games in 2018-19 and 150 games in the 2019-20 season. Beginning with 2020-21, the Sun Belt’s agreement includes the following on an ESPN platform: A minimum of 500 events per year, all football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball games, a minimum of 10 football games per year on a combination of ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, all live coverage of regular-season competition across all sports each year, all live coverage of conference championship events each year. 

The 2019 Sun Belt Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships (March 11-17) are set for live coverage on ESPN2 and ESPN+ as well. The first round, second round, quarterfinals and semifinals of the men’s tournament will be live on ESPN+ with the championship game on ESPN2. All nine games of the women’s tournament will be live on ESPN+.

Sun Belt Women’s Basketball Opens 37th Season
Sun Belt women’s basketball tips off its 37th season with four teams in action on the opening day of the regular season on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

A New Face on the Sidelines
Georgia State’s women’s basketball welcomes Gene Hill to the sidelines for the 2018-19 season. Hill comes to GSU from NC State where he was an assistant coach for the past five seasons.

Championship Information
The 2019 Sun Belt Women’s Basketball Championship is set for March 11 and 13-16. The tournament begins on Monday, March 11, with two first-round games taking place at on-campus sites. The remaining eight teams converge on Lakefront Arena in New Orleans starting on Wednesday, March 13, with the winner earning the league’s automatic bid to the 2019 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship. All games are set for live coverage on ESPN+. The championship game is scheduled for Saturday, March 16 at 11:00 a.m. CT.

No Senior, No Problem
For the first time since the 2013-14 season, Louisiana will be going at it without any seniors on the team. This year’s squad has four freshmen, one redshirt freshman, three sophomores and four juniors. The 2013-14 squad had five freshmen, three sophomores, one redshirt sophomore and one junior.
 
Going for Five Straight
Louisiana enters the season with a chance to extend its winning seasons streak to five. Already in the middle of the best four-year stretch in program history, the Ragin’ Cajuns have gone 85-49 over the past four seasons, and 15 wins during the upcoming season would give Louisiana 100 wins over the past four-plus seasons.

Facing the SEC
Louisiana will face-off with four teams from the Southeastern Conference, for the second-straight season. Louisiana will head to Auburn (Nov. 25), followed by a trip to Ole Miss on Dec. 12. Louisiana State will then make a trip to the Cajundome on Dec. 20, and Louisiana will wrap up its non-conference schedule with a visit to Mississippi State on Dec. 30.

Heading for the Border
This season Louisiana will make a trip to Edinburg, Texas for its non-conference tournament, where they will take part in the Texas Rio Grande Valley: Battle on the Border. The tournament, hosted by UT-Rio Grande Valley, will run over the weekend from Nov. 30-Dec. 1, and features three teams besides the Ragin’ Cajuns. Louisiana will face off with Texas A&M Corpus Christi (Nov. 30) and UTRGV (Dec. 1). But Prairie View A&M will also be in town and they will face off with UTRGV (Nov. 30) and AMCC (Dec. 1).

Youth Will Be Served
The roster makeup for the 2018-19 Georgia Southern women’s basketball squad is one of the more unique ones in DI women’s basketball. The Eagles have no seniors, five juniors, two sophomores, one redshirt freshman and four true freshmen. Georgia Southern is one of only eight teams in DI that do not have either a senior or a redshirt junior on the roster. The other teams are: Boston College, Elon, Howard, fellow Sun Belt school Louisiana, UMBC, Saint Peter’s (NJ) and Utah Valley. The average age of the Eagles’ roster is also just 19.33 years old, which ranks as one of the 10 youngest teams in DI as well. UMBC and SMU have rosters averaging exactly 19 years old, the youngest in the country.
 
At Home at the Point
Junior point guard Amira Atwater emerged as one of the Sun Belt Conference’s best playmakers at the point guard position in 2017-18, ranking third in the Sun Belt Conference in assists per game (4.3) and sixth in assist/turnover ratio (1.3). Her 125 assists were the ninth-most in a single season in GS history and twice last season she surpassed 10 assists in a game. She set a new school single-game record with 13 assists in the Eagles’ 73-68 win over UT Arlington on Jan. 27, then she delivered 11 assists in the triple-overtime 88-81 loss to Louisiana in the first round of the 2018 Sun Belt Conference Tournament on March 6.
 
Challenging Slate for the Eagles in 2018-19
In addition to the 14 home games for the Eagles this season, Georgia Southern will face off against nine teams that advanced to the postseason in 2017-18. The second game of the season features a trip to Virginia Tech, who was the WNIT Runner-up last year. The non-conference slate also includes NCAA tournament teams Mercer and the University of Georgia - the Eagles will be looking for their first win over the Bulldogs since 1981. Three Sun Belt teams made the postseason last year - Little Rock advanced to the NCAA, Texas State to the WNIT and South Alabama to the WBI.

The Friendly Confines of UTA’s CPC
UTA was 13-2 at College Park Center during the 2017-18 season with the lone losses coming to Houston and South Alabama. UTA is 24-5 at CPC dating back to the 2016-17 season.

Troy’s K-Rob Leading the Way
Since she took over as the team’s starting point guard on Jan. 20, Kayla Robinson was been nearly unstoppable. Robinson became the first player in the league’s 36-year history to be named Sun Belt Conference Women’s Basketball Player of the Week three consecutive weeks (1/29, 2/5, 2/12). Since becoming an everyday starter, Troy went 11-4 with Robinson averaging 16.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.9 steals per game. She raised her points per game average by 4.5 points from 9.5 to 13.0 over an eight-game span from Jan. 13-Feb. 8.

A-State’s Boyer Entering 20th Season in Jonesboro
Brian Boyer begins his 20th season as head coach at Arkansas State, placing him among the longest tenured head coaches in Division I women’s basketball. Only 20 coaches have been employed with their current institutions longer than Boyer. Boyer started his head coaching career in 1999-00 and two other coaches from that same season are also employed with their schools as a head coach (Care Green - Liberty & Aaron
Johnston - South Dakota State).

Deans of Sun Belt Women’s Basketball
Little Rock’s Joe Foley and Arkansas State’s Brian Boyer are two of the longest tenured coaches in Sun Belt Women’s Basketball and both have won 194 league games since taking over their respective programs.

Troy’s Offense is Something Special
The Troy Trojan offensive attack is something special as it pertains to Sun Belt women’s basketball. For the past six seasons, all under head coach Chanda Rigby, the Trojans have led the league in scoring offense and rebounding, four of those years the Trojans averaged over 80 points per game. If they continue that same success with scoring the Trojans would move into second all-time in scoring leaders in the league.

Getting Defensive is Little Rock’s Prowess
Since Joe Foley took over the Little Rock program he’s done something no other coach in Sun Belt women’s basketball history has done: lead the league in scoring defense 12 times. For the past 12 of 13 seasons, all under Foley, Little Rock has led the league in the scoring defense deparment, with no team allowing more than 58.4 points per game during that stretch.

Familiar Faces Back on the Court
Nine of the league’s 12 schools will return three or more starters from last year’s squads. Appalachian State will return all five of its starters from last season with a host of other schools returning four. A couple of past award winners in Georgia State’s Jada Lewis (2016-17 Freshman of the Year) and UTA’s Cierra Johnson (2016-17 Defensive Player of the Year) will be back in action this season after sitting out 2017-18 due to injury.

UPCOMING SCHEDULE
Tuesday, November 6
Troy at Florida State, 10:00 AM
Western Carolina at Coastal Carolina, 4:00 PM
Lamar at Louisiana, 5:00 PM
Wofford at Georgia Southern, 6:30 PM

Wednesday, November 7
UNC Greensboro at Georgia State, 10:00 AM
Spring Hill at South Alabama, 7:00 PM

Friday, November 9
Little Rock at Louisiana Tech, 11:00 AM
ULM at SMU, 11:00 AM
Appalachian State at UAB, 6:00 PM
Arkansas State at Oklahoma State, 7:00 PM
(1) Texas State at New Mexico, 8:00 PM

Saturday, November 10
Georgia State at Florida Atlantic, 11:00 AM
Georgia Southern at Virginia Tech, 2:00 PM
Jackson State at UTA, 2:30 PM

Sunday, November 11
Appalachian State at Georgia Tech, 1:00 PM
Louisiana at McNeese State, 2:00 PM
ULM at Texas Tech, 2:00 PM

Monday, November 12
Memphis at Arkansas State, 5:30 PM
Samford at Troy, 6:00 PM
Georgia State at FIU, 6:00 PM
Mercer at Georgia Southern, 6:30 PM

All Times are Central and Subject to Change

KEY:
1 - Preseason WNIT (Various Sites)