I will miss some of these: I always do. I may have missed all of them; who knows? But I do it for fun, and to get the discussion going for those of us who like college basketball. I am sticking my neck out, but it costs me nothing and does not hurt at all if it gets chopped off. I take no offense whatsoever to those disagreeing with me. I certainly am no expert.

In hindsight now, as I look back on the predictions, I am more convinced than before that the Belt will be down this year. But with the flood of jucos coming in, who can tell? Juco stats are notoriously deceiving. We have several teams in rebuilding mode, and teams at our level tend to do that with jucos, for better or worse.

It looks ominously like Georgia State and everyone else this year. I just do not see the horses anywhere else to run with their thoroughbreds. But the race for second may be a very good one, and the race for byes in the tournament ought to be brutal.