🏀 2026-27 Southland Preview 🏀 Just 18 days to college hoops! Today, we preview the Southland Conference (@SouthlandSports) Team to watch: McNeese. Three straight Southland Tournament titles, back-to-back NCAA Tournament trips, and the headline this offseason wasn’t a departure, it was a stay. Larry Johnson led the league in scoring at 17.4 points a game as a sophomore and had real NBA-adjacent money on the table, but he’s back for another run at a fourth straight title. The projected gap: Stephen F. Austin. The Lumberjacks lost five of their six leading scorers off a 28-6 team that won the regular season outright, and this board still has them in a clear 2nd, right behind McNeese. That’s as much a bet on Matt Braeuer’s system as it is on any specific returning name, Narit Chotikavanic is really the only proven continuity piece left. Here’s the thing about Lamar: five players on this roster are transfers who’ve never shared a floor together, and this board already has them projected 4th. Jeremiah Jones, Quante Berry, and Niccolo Moretti all arrive from entirely different programs (Washburn, Memphis, Florida Atlantic), with Alvin Brooks betting his 6th season on chemistry developing fast. Storylines worth watching: - Larry Johnson chasing a repeat Player of the Year season after turning down bigger offers to stay in Lake Charles. - Matt Braeuer trying to prove last year’s 28-win debut was the new standard, not the ceiling, with almost an entirely new supporting cast. - McNeese’s roster remake around Johnson, Corey Chest (Ole Miss) and Jerrell Colbert (a fifth-year grad transfer coming off a career-high 17-point game) betting that experience plus continuity beats any one shiny new name. - Whether Lamar’s transfer haul gels fast enough to crack the top tier the board is already projecting for them. Player who can’t be ignored: Larry Johnson. Led the conference in usage and scoring as a sophomore, got real interest from the SEC, and chose to run it back anyway. If McNeese wins a fourth straight title, this is the engine driving it. Fun fact: McNeese has reached the NCAA Tournament in three straight seasons under two different head coaches, proof the program’s success has outlasted any one hire, which makes betting against a fourth straight Southland title this year a genuinely risky call.