No conference games have been played since the last set of power rankings came out, so re-hashing those rankings seems like a useless exercise. Instead, I’ll try to break down the six teams in the race for the final two Big South tournament home games. What we know:

1. Coastal Carolina has locked up the No. 1 seed.
2. Liberty has locked up the No. 2 seed.

Now the easiest of the remaining teams to break down:

GARDNER-WEBB—GWU will be the No. 7 seed if it wins its final three games (@CSU, vs. RAD, vs. HPU) and High Point loses at UNC Asheville. ... GWU will be the No. 8 seed in any other scenario.

Now moving on to the other five teams:

UNC ASHEVILLE—The Bulldogs are the only team left in the 3-through-7 bunch that can finish 11-7, and they’ll do so if they win their final three games (@CCU, vs. HPU, vs. RAD). The most likely scenario for Asheville is that it wins two out of three games, thus finishing at 10-8. Now, Winthrop and VMI cannot both finish 10-8, since they play each other. That would leave the Bulldogs in a tie with one of them perhaps, and also perhaps Charleston Southern, which finishes with two home games. If that’s the case, Asheville would be on the road because Winthrop and VMI each will have beaten second-place Liberty in that scenario, and CSU will have beaten first-place Coastal. Asheville is 0-4 against the top two this year and split with CSU, WU and VMI.

Best-case scenario: Asheville wins out and claims the No. 3; or Asheville wins two of three and Charleston Southern loses to Coastal Carolina, guaranteeing Asheville a home game.

CHARLESTON SOUTHERN: CSU finishes with home games tonight against Gardner-Webb and Saturday against Coastal Carolina. If the Bucs win both, they’ll be guaranteed a home game because of the win over Coastal. CSU swept VMI and would win a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Keydets. CSU and Winthrop split, but CSU would own a win over Coastal. Winthrop was swept by the Chanticleers.

It gets dicey, though, if CSU can only manage a split, because it would lose its trump card of the Coastal win. That sweep over VMI is going to play a key role in any tiebreaking scenario, especially a potential three-way tie with Winthrop and the Keydets.

WINTHROP: Even if the Eagles win out, they’ll need some help to nab a home game in the form of a Charleston Southern loss to Coastal Carolina or two losses by UNC Asheville. A win over Liberty would give the Eagles a tiebreaker edge that only VMI enjoys right now, as the Keydets were the only conference team outside of Coastal to beat the Flames. Winthrop could still finish as low as seventh, but that would take two losses and two High Point wins.

VMI: The Keydets are in the same position as Winthrop. They need two wins and some help to secure a home game. Getting swept by CSU hurts in this regard. VMI really needs Coastal to beat CSU on Saturday to drop the Bucs to a likely 9-9 finish, and then VMI would have to get a road sweep of Presbyterian and Winthrop. Or the Keydets need to have Asheville lose twice, which isn’t likely given how poorly High Point has played on the road this year.

HIGH POINT: The best the Panthers can finish is 9-9, so they need two road wins at Gardner-Webb and at UNC Asheville and for a lot of chaos to happen in front of them. High Point was swept by VMI, split with Winthrop and split with CSU, and they would own a season sweep of Asheville if the Panthers won out this week. Tough to see the pieces falling in place for HPU to earn a game at the Millis Center on March 1.

After Thursday’s games, I’ll give a more detailed breakdown of what needs to happen for each team in the race. Look for that update Friday on the blog.