Yet another conference with limited pre-season information, which is making this job frustrating; no team capsules. This will be the first season that the conference gets to play a full schedule, and it should be a barn-burner. The top three teams were separated by the merest of margins in the coaches’ poll. Henderson received four first-place votes and 57 points; East Central and Ouachita each polled 54 points with ECU getting three first-place nods to Ouachita’s two. That fits with last season’s results quite nicely.
The bottom four teams all received 22 points, so the second division of the conference can be expected to be a mess too. The only thing the coaches really seem in sync with is Harding’s position as the fourth-place team. It’s clear that Arkansas-Monticello is expected to fall off a good bit, while Arkansas Tech is figured to improve.
Southern Nazarene and Northwest Oklahoma State still aren’t eligible for the conference title; SNU will be next year, while NWOSU has to wait until 2014 as their application to join Division II was denied last year, but accepted this July.