I see the top 5 teams in this league as dangerous, real dangerous when it comes to early season action this year. I think this league ends up being a dog fight for second place between 4 of them as I see Creighton just having too much depth coming back (including the conference POY in McDermott & the conference defensive MVP in Echinique). The other 4 Evansville, Northern Iowa, Drake & Illinois St. all return a lot this year (however Drake & Illinois St. both had a key player each transfer (Rice for Drake & Moore for Illinois St. which would have made this conference even more interesting).
The league got two bids last year & it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see them with 3 at the end of this year. Evansville & Northern Iowa both have non-conference schedules with good opportunity to build strong cases out of conference and also figure to be the more battle tested going into conference play over Drake & Illinois St.