Foley: All eyes on UALR-ASU

The game is still two days away, but Joe Foley can feel the suspense building.

Foley's UALR women's basketball team (16-2, 9-0 Sun Belt Conference) and Arkansas State (13-7, 8-2) will renew their in-state rivalry at 5:05 p.m. Thursday at the Convocation Center in Jonesboro. It's the first of two regular-season games between the teams this year, and it matches the top two teams in the Sun Belt standings.

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UALR women at Arkansas State

WHEN 5:05 p.m. Thursday

WHERE Convocation Center, Jonesboro

RECORDS UALR 16-2, 9-0 Sun Belt Conference; ASU 13-7, 8-2

COACHES UALR: Joe Foley (231-128 in 12th season at UALR; 687-209 in 28th season overall); ASU: Brian Boyer (260-219 in 16th season at ASU and overall)

RADIO KARN-AM, 920, in Little Rock; KNEA-FM, 95.3, in Jonesboro; KNEA-AM, 970, in Jonesboro

INTERNET ualrtrojans.com, astateredwolves.com

That had Foley touting the matchup to the Downtown Tip Off Club on Monday at the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, saying it will have the same type of big-game feel UALR is accustomed to playing a few times in recent seasons.

"Isn't it awesome that both teams from Arkansas are leading the conference?" Foley said. "Every record is out the door. It will be blood and guts and, hopefully a great game. ... I'm just proud you can look in the newspaper every day and you can see both Arkansas teams are leading the conference, that doesn't happen very often. That's good for women's basketball."

UALR can distance itself from the rest of the Sun Belt with a victory, and chalk up a resume-boosting victory in the process against an ASU team that was the preseason favorite to win the conference.

The Trojans will take a 10-game winning streak into Thursday night's game between the teams picked first and second in the Sun Belt by league coaches before the season, and they have beaten every Sun Belt team they've played by 20 points or more.

If it keeps winning, UALR could put itself in position for more than a regular-season league title.

Foley said Monday he hasn't yet looked at his team's Ratings Percentage Index ranking, but UALR is at No. 46 according to the NCAA. That's a solid spot if it does not win the Sun Belt Tournament and would need an at-large bid to reach the NCAA Tournament. For reference, UALR was No. 56 in the RPI when it received an at-large bid to the tournament in 2010.

The Ratings Percentage Index is a scale used by the NCAA Selection Committee to rank Division I basketball teams by their performance in light of strength of schedule. Low RPI ranking numbers denote strong teams and high numbers, weaker ones.

For UALR's RPI ranking to stay high enough to warrant an at-large bid if needed, it will need victories over the highest-ranked teams possible. ASU is No. 72 in the RPI, but the next highes0 ranked Sun Belt team is Louisiana-Lafayette at No. 139 followed by Texas State (145), Troy (146) and Appalachian State (147).

"You don't have that opportunity [often]," Foley said. "So it's very important."

That's the new reality for Sun Belt women's basketball, a sport that might have been hit harder by realignment than any Sun Belt sport other than football.

Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee, ranked No. 27 and 48 in the RPI this year respectively, used to provide UALR with stiff conference competition annually. UALR's only at-large bid, in 2010, came in large part because of regular-season victories over both teams.

Foley said he expects a bigger challenge from Sun Belt teams when it plays teams a second time, but it still makes him miss the more-frequent challenges.

"I loved those games. Playing against Middle, our fans knew what to expect and the same thing with Western," Foley said. "There were at least three or four of those a year. But, it's one of those situations where you just go to develop some other ones."

Sports on 01/27/2015

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