Who are the contenders with two weeks left in Big South men’s basketball regular season?

Anyone who has spent time around Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey - and most other college basketball coaches - knows he won’t look past the next game on the schedule. So I’ll do it instead.

Only two weeks remain in the Big South Conference’s regular season, and the league’s standings table is typically jumbled for this time of year.

The Big South ranks first out of the 32 Division I conferences for percentage of games decided by four points or less, or overtime. Twenty-four of 79 Big South games (30.4 percent) this season met that criteria, a figure that will likely continue to grow in the next 14 days.

Here’s a look at the top-seven teams and their hopes of winning the regular season title and at least an NIT bid:

The contenders

UNC Asheville leads the league headed into the final two weeks of the regular season. The Bulldogs are first or second in six out of nine defensive categories that KenPom.com tracks and are a top-100 defensive team nationally. Nick McDevitt’s team hasn’t suffered from the loss of gunner Andrew Rowsey, who transferred to Marquette before the season. Instead of one focal point, the Bulldogs have five different players averaging 10 points or more, including a pair of 6-foot-5 freshmen on the perimeter whose length is one reason behind the Bulldogs’ defensive improvement. Asheville’s game Saturday in Rock Hill against Winthrop could decide the regular season title; McDevitt’s side beat the Eagles in their first meeting, but did trail by 23 points early in the second half before roaring back to win. Both teams can take plenty of positives from that experience into Saturday’s pivotal contest.

Games left: at Presbyterian; at Winthrop; Liberty; Coastal Carolina.

Winthrop hasn’t won an outright Big South regular season title since 2006-07 (the 07-08 team shared it with Asheville). Those mid-2000s teams were built on defense, but this year’s Eagles are a bit different. Winthrop is first or second in the Big South in six of the nine KenPom.com offensive statistics and have tended to out-score opponents more often than shut them down defensively. The Eagles have arguably the toughest final four games of any of the contenders. But they’ve won 10 of the last 11 thanks in part to insatiable offense; Kelsey’s club has averaged at least 1.02 points per possession in 15 of the last 16 games. Winthrop’s ease in cooking up buckets makes it a dangerous team in the coming weeks. When the Eagles have paired scoring with defensive stops, they’ve been the best team in the Big South.

Games left: Coastal Carolina; UNC Asheville; at High Point; at Campbell.

Coastal Carolina is the same kind of team the school has had almost every season since Cliff Ellis took over eight years ago. The Chanticleers are very strong defenders and rebounders, two traits that helped them get to the NCAA tournament the last two years. Ellis’ crew has won eight out of its last nine games, with victories over Asheville and High Point during that stretch. Coastal is holding opponents under 40 percent shooting from the field - the Chanticleers are 22nd nationally in that category - a stat that will send a shiver down Winthrop fans’ backs when they think about losses in the Big South tourney championship to Ellis’ crew the last two Marches. Even with the conference tournament at Campbell this season, Coastal Carolina would be the team I’d least like to see the first week of March if I was a Big South coach.

Games left: at Winthrop; Charleston Southern; at UNC Asheville.

High Point is hanging around in the contenders group thanks to two straight wins, including a big one over Coastal last Thursday. Prior to that the Panthers had lost five out of eight and slumped into the middle of the league standings. High Point is tough to get a read on; it has the most dynamic player in the league in John Brown, but hasn’t surrounded him with a high-level running mate. Lorenzo Cugini, Adam Weary and Anthony Lindauer are solid role players but what is High Point’s Plan B when Brown can’t carry the team, or the role players aren’t contributing enough?

Games left: at Longwood; at Radford; Winthrop; at Presbyterian.

Liberty is in this conversation, which in itself is an amazing achievement for coach Ritchie McKay in his first year back in Lynchburg. The Flames’ success centers on stolid defense, rigid control of game tempo and making threes. The latter portion of that recipe - Liberty is the fourth-most reliant team on 3-point offense in the country, according to KenPom.com - is what makes Liberty’s continued success down the stretch less likely than some of these other teams. But the Flames are the hottest team in the Big South at the moment, are tied for the seventh-longest active winning streak in the country, and do have three home games in the last four.

Games left: Radford; Presbyterian; at UNC Asheville; Gardner-Webb.

The dark horses

More like the spoilers.

Both Radford and Gardner-Webb have suffered losses to the league’s basement dwellers that consigned them to the middle of the table. They’ve shown their ability, though, in big wins, Gardner-Webb beating High Point and Coastal, while Radford swept top team Asheville. Radford can hurt the regular season title hopes of Liberty and High Point - their opponents in the next two games -, while Gardner-Webb can do the same to the Flames in the regular season finale.

Especially don’t count out the Highlanders; Winthrop radio man Dave Friedman pointed out last week that Radford had won six games this season when they took the lead for good inside the last 90 seconds. They added a seventh against Asheville on Saturday, scoring the final six points to beat the Bulldogs in a game that perfectly summarized the pervasive parity in the Big South.

This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Who are the contenders with two weeks left in Big South men’s basketball regular season?."