New Sun Belt Conference Commissioner Keith Gill said that his "main goal for Sun Belt basketball is to improve" the NCAA Tournament seeding of the conference champion annually, according to the AP. Gill said that all sports "will be evaluated and improved in various ways, but the conference will continue to pour a lot of effort" into basketball (AP, 3/19). In Arkansas, Christian Boutwell notes Gill during his introductory press conference yesterday "spoke extensively about the Sun Belt's new pod scheduling system for basketball, which begins next season and is intended to increase the Sun Belt's representation in the NCAA Tournament." Gill said that the Sun Belt "intends to develop a system to analyze if the changes 'that we made, as it relates to the basketball strategic planning, are working.'" He said that it is "valuable to have a larger sample size to properly evaluate if the pod scheduling system is effective, saying it will be a 'multi-year' evaluation process." Gill also "vowed to elevate perception and success of Sun Belt football." He said, "There's plenty of things that we can be doing in the football space to help us grow. ... I don't think we're ever going to be satisfied with where we are in football until we're at the top" (ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, 3/20).
