New Year for the Herd

Alright, so I took a few days off to enjoy the bowl season and relax before the new year fully ramps up, so sue me. Ok, don't really, I don't have the money anyway.

Lets get things rolling with the first rundown of 2010, all of the stories are from the Huntington Herald-Dispatch unless otherwise noted.

• The 2009 Football season is officially in the books, and it isn't the prettiest book every written.

• And here's just how things turned out statistically.

• Oh yeah, with a new year there's a new coach, and with new coaches, there are well, more new coaches.

• And believe it or not, I know I don't mention it often enough, but it's Basketball season and the Herd Men got a victory over St. Bonaventure the other day.

• In the round ball world, believe it or not Conference USA is getting some respect for being something other than that league that Memphis is in. (Dick Vitale, ESPN.com)

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Alright, now again as I have mentioned I've been neglecting this little thing called Conference USA Basketball, so I'm going to try and fix that. I know there's a lot of basketball left to be played throughout the league but it's never too early to speculate, right?

ESPN's bracketology has come out twice already so why not jump into the action?

So here's my January edition of the guess-i-tology, or Conference Tournatology, or well, we'll work on the title. The important thing is as of January 3, 2010(it feels weird saying 20-10 already), these are my projections for the seeding and playing of the C-USA Men's Tournament.

Seeding
1. UAB
2. Memphis
3. Marshall
4. Tulsa
5. UTEP
6. Southern Miss
7. ECU
8. Houston
9. UCF
10. Tulane
11. Rice
12. SMU

So that would make the match-ups look a little something like this;

UAB, Memphis, Marshall and Tulsa all get a first-round bye. Admittedly it was tough for me to choose between the Golden Hurricane and the Miners for the 4 seed, either could be a top four team and along with Marshall the three teams could swing to any of the 3, 4, or 5 slots. (Winning pick in Italics)

Round 1

7. ECU vs 10. Tulane
6. USM vs 11. Rice
8. Houston vs 9. UCF
5. UTEP vs 12. SMU

There are some picks in round one that could be lopsided and some that could really go either way. ECU and UTEP should handle their games easily as UTEP is possibly a 3 seed if things go their way in the year, and ECU is playing one of the toughest schedules of the year. Rice is prone to the first round upset, but I think USM is too solid here. Houston-UCF is the matchup of the First Round, and I like UCF for the upset here.

Round 2

7. ECU vs 2. Memphis
6. USM vs 3. Marshall
9. UCF vs 1. UAB
5. UTEP vs 4. Tulsa

Memphis should dispatch the Pirates easily, the defending Champions only getting the two seed because I don't think they can sustain what they used to with a depleted line-up. UCF will be turned away easily by the Blazers and Marshall will survive a USM squad that has the potential to shock some people this year. UTEP-Tulsa will be a good match up, but I think Tulsa can withstand.

Semi-Finals

2. Memphis vs 3. Marshall
1. UAB vs 4. Tulsa.

Depending on the roster at this point in the year, Tulsa may have a chance to take down a UAB team that is injury prone at times, but I wouldn't look for anything shocking from Marshall, the Championship goes 1 vs. 2 as planned.

Championship

1. UAB vs 2. Memphis

Memphis is down this year, but that's a relative level of down, they will still have enough to easily put away UAB and claim the Conference Title once again.

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Ok and finally to wrap up this long post, it's time for the first Girl of the Week for 2010, so for the week of January 3rd, 2010, your girl of the week is...

Misa Campo.

She's known basically for being undeniably hot, and is apparently a bartender at some bar in Los Angeles, which I imagine got a lot more popular the minute her photos hit the internet.