Get To Know a College Basketball Mid-Major: Southwestern Athletic Conference

You know all about the Power 5 conferences in college basketball. You hear about those more than any other, and those groups often dominate the March Madness conversation. There are 26 other conferences out there, however, and our goal is to get you up to speed on the teams, players and fights in the standings to know before the conference tournaments, Selection Sunday and the official start of March Madness. It’s time for you to get to know a mid-major: this time, it’s the Southwestern Athletic Conference. The SWAC has been around for over a century — it formed in 1920, when six HBCUs in Texas became its charter members. While there were near-constant exits and entrances by member schools over the years, SWAC membership has mostly stabilized this century, with one member joining in 1999 and another two in 2021, and no others joining or leaving. There are now 12 members, and while it’s less southwestern than it was a century ago when the entire conference was Texas-based, there are still two members there, as well as two each in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, one other in Arkansas and three in Mississippi. All 12 teams will participate in the SWAC tournament — a new setup — which is split into five rounds and two distinct quarterfinal segments. The top two seeds get an automatic berth into the quarterfinals to face whichever two of the seventh through 12th seeds survive the opening rounds, while four takes on five and three takes on six in the other portion of the quarterfinals. The two then merge for the semis, leaving open the possibility of the top two seeds facing off in the finals. For both men’s and women’s SWAC basketball, the automatic bid is going to be the only way into March Madness — that’s how it’s been in each of the last three seasons, and without any teams on the bubble or better than that, it’s how it will be in 2026, as well. SWAC — Men’s College Basketball Leaders: The quickest way to explain the current state of SWAC basketball is to look at its current leader, Bethune-Cookman. The Wildcats are 12-3 in conference play, 2.5 games up on Southern University. All those wins brought Bethune-Cookman’s overall record for 2025-2026 to 15-13. The top team in the conference standings is also its top team in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, and the only one to not be in the bottom 100 teams in Division I men’s basketball. But it did not escape that designation by much, as the Wildcats are 254th of 365 teams. Bethune-Cookman has the top offense in the SWAC in conference play, at 79 points per game, and the second-ranked defense with 69.8 points allowed per game. Its offense is based on 2-pointers, as it’s shooting 55.3% on those while leading in made field goals, but is last in SWAC in 3-point attempts and thanks to that just 10th in makes despite ranking fifth in 3-point percentage. From up close is where the Wildcats thrive, between the efficient 2-point game and ranking first in defensive rebounds, boards overall and blocks. KenPom rates Southern as the best offense in the conference, but only barely, 261st to Bethune-Cookman’s 273rd, with Arkansas-Pine Bluff nestled in between — the Wildcats get the edge in Net Rating thanks to a significantly better defense, however. Alabama A&M is third in SWAC, at 9-6, then Jackson State is 8-6. Texas Southern and Florida A&M are tied at 8-7, with Grambling and Alcorn State under .500 at 6-8. Alabama State and Prairie View are 6-9, while Mississippi Valley has already locked in the bottom seed for the SWAC tournament at 1-12 in conference play. There aren’t many competitors here in terms of teams that are a good bet to take down Bethune-Cookman or Southern. Jackson State having the conference’s leading scorer in Daeshun Ruffin — the senior guard is also fourth in Division I at 23.5 points per game — should mean they are a threat to win any game, but part of that scoring is also that Ruffin’s Usage Percentage is 35.5% — that’s the highest in all of Division I. Even with him scoring and facilitating in notable ways, Jackson State is 345th in NET — he gets the ball that often because he has to. Still, the fact that these teams are all generally clustered together, and tournaments are win-or-go-home by nature, means that Bethune-Cookman isn’t guaranteed anything. SWAC - Women’s College Basketball Leaders: The top of the women’s side of SWAC is better off than the men’s, as the top team by NET, Alabama A&M, ranks 199th through Feb. 25. Southern University is second, at 223, and it’s not until after the Lady Jaguars that things truly slip to the back of the rankings. Every team after these two is bottom-63, from 300th Alabama State to 359th Prairie View. Alabama A&M is first in the conference, too, at 14-1. It’s followed by 11-3 Alcorn, 11-4 Alabama State and 10-4 Southern. Arkansas-Pine Bluff is 8-7, while Jackson State and Grambling are both 7-7. Florida A&M is 6-9, both Texas Southern and Mississippi Valley are 5-10, Bethune-Cookman is 4-11 and Prairie View has already secured the bottom seed for the SWAC tournament thanks to an 0-15 conference record. Alabama A&M has the top player in Plus/Minus, graduate center Moses Davenport, and the first-ranked player in Offensive Rating, graduate guard Kalia Walker. Davenport also leads the conference in Player Efficiency Rating, with Walker eighth. They are a duo that the rest of SWAC has struggled to contain this season: while the Bulldogs lost their first game in conference play, they have rattled off 14-straight victories since. And the team that did beat them, Mississippi Valley, is now toward the bottom of the conference standings. While offensively the Lady Bulldogs don’t offer very much — they score 66.6 points per game — defensively they are a menace that has held opponents under 50 points per game in conference play, and was even solid outside of it: for the season as a whole, opponents are scoring 56.3 points per game against Alabama A&M, 17th in Division I. Its adjusted Defensive Rating comes out worse, but it’s still 135th thanks to allowing 90.06 points per 100 possessions. The problem is the offense: that ranks 273rd in Offensive Rating. Southern is the closest competitor to Alabama A&M even if the conference standings don’t say so. It’s 163rd in adjusted Net Rating, at -10.54, compared to A&M’s 135 and -8.15. Alabama A&M’s offense and defense are ever so slightly better, but everything falls off a cliff after that: Alcorn is next up in SWAC, and its Net Rating is -21.96. [Get to Know a Mid-Major: All 26 Mid-Majors] Southern’s problem is that it just doesn’t have a scorer, not even one on the level of Alabama A&M’s modest options. The team leader, sophomore forward Demya Porter, is averaging 10.0 points per game — no one else is above 7.9. The Jaguars are middle of the conference in rebounds and points, and toward the bottom in free throws attempted and made, but the defense does allow 52.6 points per game in conference play and forces more turnovers than anyone else in SWAC. The Jaguars can be disruptive, and it means they are a threat to A&M’s Bulldogs. As for the rest of the conference, no one has beaten Alabama A&M since that initial, uncharacteristic W for Mississippi Valley. Southern is vulnerable — it started out 7-1 in conference play but has gone 3-3 since — but when its head is on straight it can take down anyone, and even when it was struggling it only lost to the Bulldogs by a bucket. Just one team will get the automatic bid by being conference champion, and given the gap between Alabama A&M and Southern, it feels like it will be one of those two. That’s not how the standings look, though, so things are still up in the air despite that feeling.