After two seasons of home-cooked turkey and mashed potatoes over Thanksgiving weekend while hosting the Viking Invitational multi-team event, Cleveland State will add some jambalaya to the menu in November when the Vikings compete at the Big Easy Classic in New Orleans.
The event will take place on November 29th and 30th (Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend) at the John A. Alario, Sr. events center in suburban Westwego, LA. As with many MTEs, the field will be separated into sub-tournaments. CSU is one of six teams in the “Bayou Tournament,” opposite the four-team “Fleur de Lis Tournament,” and will take on Louisiana on the 29th, followed by Lamar on the 30th.
Cleveland State has only played those two opponents once each, with a loss to Lamar during the 1992-93 season followed by a victory over Louisiana in 2017-18 (coincidentally, at a Thanksgiving MTE, the South Point Shootout in Las Vegas). However, the Cardinals and Ragin’ Cajuns both project to present formidable challenges during the 2024-25 season.
The Ragin’ Cajuns were 17-14 overall last year, but made a spirited run to the Sun Belt Conference semifinals before bowing out to James Madison. Though they lost their top two scorers to the transfer portal, Louisiana more than made up for it with an impressive incoming haul featuring the likes of Kamryn Jones (who will be able to visit with her old Houston teammates at the Big Easy Classic) and Erica Lafayette (Rutgers). Both players are versatile and athletic wings who played steady minutes at power conference schools, and will undoubtedly be significant pieces of Louisiana’s game plan. For whatever their past results may be worth at this point, UL split their two conference games with 2023-24 CSU opponent Southern Mississippi, and grabbed a tight victory at Central Michigan. Coincidentally, they also played Lamar at home, dropping a three-point decision to the Cardinals.
Lamar took the Southland Conference regular season championship last season, with their 17-1 league record part of a 24-7 overall mark. They were upset by Texas A&M – Corpus Christi in the league championship game but, much like the similarly-fated Vikings, received automatic qualification to the inaugural WBIT – though an unfriendly bracket delivered an always-brutal trip to Pullman, WA and a defeat to Washington State. Still, Aqua Franklin is expected to bring back her top players, including 6-2 Akasha Davis, who averaged a double-double last season with 15.2 points and 11.1 rebounds, as well as guard Sabria Dean and her 13.8 points per game.
Both squads should provide a nice shot in the arm to a Cleveland State non-conference schedule that was let down by a few under-performing opponents a year ago, and ranked 198th overall. Lamar placed 126th in the NET rankings, while Louisiana was 172nd. For context, the Vikings, Green Bay and Purdue Fort Wayne were the only Horizon League teams higher than 172nd in the final NET release.
