The SoCon Lowdown: A weekend to forget
Plus: Some quick looks ahead to the conference slate
Well, after a spectacular week leading up to Christmas, the SoCon was bound to come back to earth a bit. That’s putting it lightly, though—the league’s closing games before heading into conference play were downright abysmal. The last weekend of 2023 was lowlighted by two blowout losses to underwhelming P6 teams and two significant struggles with non-D1 opponents, including one that ended in defeat. well, at least it wasn’t a total loss, thanks to…ETSU? Huh?
Samford wrapped up their non-conference slate before Christmas, so they took this week off. The Bulldogs’ eleven-game winning streak has positioned them as slight conference favorites, but their tendencies towards runs of strong and weak play last year aren’t easily forgotten. This is the fifth six-game streak of wins or losses for Samford since the start of 2022-23, and it’s fair to wonder if hitting a roadblock in conference play—say, that visit to WCU on January 17—could leave them reeling for a while.
It feels like just yesterday the Catamounts were a long shot to win the SoCon, comfortably behind the likes of Furman and UNCG in the pecking order. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’re this good, not when Vonterius Woolbright is looking like one of the best players in the nation every time he takes the court. He logged 20 points in a double-double during WCU’s comfortable win over D2 King, his seventh such game this season—the most in Division 1, and more than double that of any other guard. He’s simply on another level.
Yeesh. Losing to Texas is fine, although it feels like a missed upset opportunity for a team that beat Arkansas. But the Spartans could’ve been playing the 1990s Bulls and what happened on Friday would still have been embarrassing. After pulling within a 27-22 margin late in the first half, UNCG went unbelievably cold and scored just 15 points across the final 24 minutes of the game, losing by a ghastly 72-37 score. Beyond Keyshaun Langley, who managed a respectable 15 points, not a single Spartan scored more than six. For a team with such high expectations and which looked like the presumptive SoCon favorite not so long ago, it’s hard to imagine a worse run of form heading into conference play.
Well, Furman now has the dubious achievement of winning an NCAA tournament game and losing to a non-D1 team in the same calendar year. The second, less desirable half of this odd pairing was delivered by the Anderson Trojans, which also handed the Paladins their first loss to a lower-division team in a decade. As they leave non-conference play, the reigning champs still haven’t strong together back-to-back D1 wins, are 1-6 against teams ranked higher then 300th in Torvik, and have now suffered the SoCon’s worst loss. At the very least, their next game—on the road against UNCG—should be fascinating to behold.
It feels a bit patronizing to give Wofford credit for anything in a game where they trailed Southern Wesleyan 34-20 at halftime, but still: you’ve gotta respect the Terriers for clawing their way back. If nothing else, they avoided an embarrassing loss of the sort their main rival ended up suffering, and they showed what their talented offense is capable of in a 55-point second half. Leading the comeback was Kyler Filewich, who scored all 10 of his points after halftime—but also pulled in some 21 rebounds on the day, the most for Wofford since at least the turn of the century. Further good news: the Terriers now get a home game against VMI, which might actually be easier than their non-D1 opponent last week.
No kidding. ETSU was the biggest (only?) highlight of the SoCon’s OOC-closing weekend, heading to Greenville1 as an underdog and pulling off a dominant 86-70 win over East Carolina. A big road victory over the respectable 7-6 Pirates marks another feather in the Bucs’ cap, building on a résumé that stands above all but the top three in WAB. They’ve taken some bad losses and pulled off some rough wins, but when it comes down to it, Brooks Savage’s first team has been altogether capable and does not look like a fun one to meet in the SoCon schedule. Four of the five teams ranked ahead of them will do so in the next two weeks.
The five-game winning streak Mercer’s currently on probably doesn’t mean much. The last two of those wins came against non-D1 foes, and they haven’t beaten anybody in the Torvik top 200 during it, nor have they won a game away from Macon. Still, five straight is five straight, and it’s something the Bears hadn’t done in over two years. Their non-conference performance never really moved the needle much on Greg Gary, though, and now they have to find out how much that momentum is worth in SoCon play.
Gun to my head, I’m still not sure if The Citadel finishes with a winning record in the SoCon. Honestly, I don’t know if they even avoid the play-in games come tournament time. An 8-5 non-conference record and a win over Notre Dame are exciting, but they wane a little under further scrutiny—the Bulldogs faced a bottom-25 schedule in OOC, contributed to by the Fighting Irish’s middling #162 ranking. Ed Conroy has put together an impressive proof of concept for how good this program can be once it’s turned all the way around, but when it comes down to it, they’re still projected as underdogs in 12 of 18 conference games. This schedule doesn’t pull any punches: first up is Western Carolina, a huge home game for The Citadel.
The Mocs barely moved in the overall rankings, yet fell from sixth to ninth in the conference hierarchy. It’s tough, but it doesn’t feel unfair for a team that’s been on a lengthy downward trend, particularly after a completely uncompetitive 101-66 loss to Auburn. As good as Trey Bonham has been since he became eligible a couple weeks ago, Chattanooga has yet to see clear returns in its overall quality of play, and travelling to Samford probably isn’t going to clarify the path forward much, barring a titanic upset.
Fortunately for Chattanooga, nobody seems to hang around ninth for long this year, and I think we can thank season-long bottom-feeders VMI for that. Their consistent, unabated losing is an inspiration to the teams that draw close to their last place, a reminder that things could always be worse. Torvik has them as an eighteen-point underdog at Wofford tomorrow, and there are still four games beyond that where they’re even less likely to pull off that elusive first D1 win. Hang in there, Keydets. At least you’re not, uh…MVSU?
Western Carolina’s Vonterius Woolbright was one of five players named an Oscar Robertson National Player of the Week, honoring his standout performances against Vanderbilt and Brescia. Golfer Matt Ege will represent East Tennessee State in the 2023 Patriot All-America, a 54-hole event featuring 150 players at the Wigwam Golf Resort in Arizona.
The fake one in NC, not the real one in SC.