Defending season champ Mercer is favored to hold off tournament champ and NCAA thrillers Florida Gulf Coast for the title. Florida Gulf Coast is not as deep as last year, but has the top two players in the conference in Bernard Thompson and Chase Fieler.

The PROJECTED Value Add projections below for Conference teams and players are meant to give a GENERAL idea of how good each could be. They are by no means an exact science like the ACTUAL www.valueaddbasketball.com figures: Rnk, Atlantic Sun, Value Add

93, Mercer, 16.53

141, Florida Gulf Coast, 16.66

163, South Carolina Upstate, 8.68

186, North Florida, 14.41

218, Jacksonville, 11.97

288, Northern Kentucky, 8.18

297, East Tennessee St., 4.67

300, Lipscomb, 2.07

322, Stetson, 5.16

348, Kennesaw St., 1.41

Preseason All-Conference/Projected Value Add Rank (based purely on average progression from stats prior to this season)

106, Thompson, Bernard, Florida Gulf Coast

164, Fieler, Chase, Florida Gulf Coast

211, Jackson, Jordan, Northern Kentucky

360, Martin, Vince, Jacksonville

386, Hall, Langston, Mercer

436, Hunt, Sam, Jacksonville

535, Nwamu, Ike, Mercer

560, Wallace, Travis, North Florida

568, Daniels, Demarcus, North Florida

618, Thomas, Bud, Mercer

About these rankings: The player rankings references are the projections (2014 Proj) at www.valueaddbasketball.com. During the season the updated Value Add for each player, which represents how much he has improved his team’s offense and defense, will appear on under the “2014 Act” search no www.valueaddbasketball.com. The team rankings are based 51% of the sum of each players’ projected Value Add rankings and 49% on the team rankings at www.kenpom.com as of November 29. You can follow the inventor of Value Add on twitter @jpudner.