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NCAA Tournament Cheat Sheet: Getting to know Liberty

Liberty

Read through the rest of the Cheat Sheets here.

Conference: Big South

Coach: Dale Layer

Record: 15-20, 6-10

Rankings and Ratings:

- Kenpom: 257
- RPI: 299
- AP/USA Today: N/A

Seeding?: Liberty will be lucky to avoid a play-in game.

Names you need to know: John Caleb Sanders (13.8 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 3.5 apg), Davon Marshall (13.2 ppg, 2.9 apg)

Stats you need to know: Liberty is a sub-300 defensive team according to Kenpom. That could be a problem against a good team.

Tendencies: The Flames don’t force turnovers and they can’t rebound the ball, but they actually are a pretty good shooting team. They hit better than 36% from beyond the arc.

Big wins, bad losses: It’s hard to have a bad loss when you’re ranked 299th in the RPI. Liberty’s best performance this season? Losing by nine at Georgetown.

How’d they get here?: The Flames were the No. 5 seed from the North Division of the Big South, but they ran through Myrtle Beach Madness to earn the league’s automatic bid with an 87-76 win over Charleston Southern.

Outlook: What’s nice about the play-in game for a team like Liberty is that it means they may actually have a chance to win a game in the NCAA tournament. While everyone appreciates a conference tournament cinderella story, those cinderellas see their dream come to an end when they run into a No. 1 seed. An interesting side note, though, is that there still remains the possibility that Liberty could be a No. 16 seed and play No. 1 Duke. Duke guard Seth Curry began his college career at Liberty.

How do I know you? Seth Curry spent his freshman year at Liberty before transferring to Duke. This is the Flames first NCAA appearance since 2004.

You can find Rob on twitter @RobDauster.