App State made a great run through their conference tourney catching lightning in a bottle as some teams do this time of year. They played 4 games in 4 days in the Sun Belt tourney to win the title but let’s not forget this team was ranked as the 5th best team in the Sun Belt entering that tournament and actually had a losing record during the regular season. They also lost 3 times this season to Troy who is ranked 305th nationally and is the worst team in the Sun Belt so App State has been far from reliable. They’ve had some rest now but this is a very thin team which can cause problems in a tournament setting. Their starters played 733 out of the 850 possible minutes in those 4 tourney games that were all very tight. Norfolk steps in from the MEAC, which isn’t a strong league, but they were the best team in their conference all season. The Spartans have had off since Saturday so they’ll be rested as well. They are also deep (15th nationally in bench minutes) and experienced with 4 seniors and 1 junior in the starting line up and multiple upperclassmen coming off the bench. Their head coach Jones has been at Norfolk for 8 years and had only one losing season (solid program). No post-season last year for anyone but in 2019 the Spartans made the NIT and beat Alabama before losing to Colorado. They are a good sized team, solid rebounding, one of the better 3-point shooting teams in the nation (39th) and they don’t turn the ball over very much. This one has upset written all over, although we wouldn’t call it that as we have this game rated as dead-even. We’ll take the points with Norfolk State.