The SoCon Lowdown: Bucky ball
Plus: Thin rosters at WCU and ETSU, plus a divided one at The Citadel
Whenever an unlikely contender rises to the top of their conference, as Samford did in its second and third seasons under Bucky McMillan, the question of whether they’ll stay there is bound to come up. This was a pretty natural thing to wonder about the Bulldogs going into 2023-24, with some key pieces of the reigning regular-season co-champions departing over the 2023 offseason. Former Lou Henson finalist Ques Glover transferred to Kansas State, all-first team forward Logan Dye and top three-point threat Bubba Parham graduated, and nobody really stood out as the guy who could take over and make Samford a real force to contend with.
Turns out, the Bulldogs aren’t just a contender anymore—they’re now the definitive best team in the league. With a dominant win over ETSU on home court this week, Samford wrapped up another SoCon title, this team with more than enough margin of error to avoid any tiebreakers. Arguably an even more impressive accomplishment: that marked their 25th win on the season, a new program record. There’s no more wondering if Bucky ball is a flash in the pan; now, the only question is whether they can parlay it into their first tournament bid in nearly a quarter-century.
The Bulldogs positioned themselves to claim the regular-season title with a down-to-the-wire win over Furman earlier in the week, maintaining their spotless record in the raucous Pete Hanna Center. Samford is one of just 17 teams in Division I without a loss at home, and has the most wins on their court among those teams. Notably, that makes them just 8-4 outside of Homewood—something to keep in mind when they make their way to Asheville for the conference tournament in a week’s time.
UNC Greensboro is 11-1 in league play against all but two teams, which have each swept the Spartans and combined to eliminate them from conference title contention. One of those teams is Samford, which makes sense. The other, which completed its sweep with an 86-72 home win over UNCG this week…is Mercer. It’s hard to know what to make of this team as the tournament approaches, but if nothing else, they’ve joined Samford in firmly establishing themselves as a top SoCon team in back-to-back years, an impressive achievement in such a turbulent conference.
Honor Huff has been a consistent force for Chattanooga all season, putting in 27 double-digit performances in their 29 games, but he’s been on another level lately. In a span of three games against ETSU, Furman, and Wofford, he averaged 28.7 points per game and shot 27-for-50 from the field. His twenty points against The Citadel in the Mocs’ most recent game, though, weren’t enough to avert a shocking 71-62 upset, a huge blow to Chattanooga’s hopes of finishing ahead of UNCG and avoiding a quarterfinal matchup with another top-six team.
The 2023 SoCon tournament notably featured an impressive title-game run by the reigning conference champion, despite Chattanooga having fallen from first to seventh that season. Furman hasn’t slipped quite as far, but it feels like the Paladins wouldn’t be a bad bet to imitate that hot streak in their own title-defense season. They’re one of only two teams in the league to defeat Samford, and they came a shot away from doing so on the road as well; in Asheville, so close to the Paladins’ home court, you could argue they should be favored if they run into the Bulldogs. As it stands, they’d need to defeat WCU in the quarterfinals to set up that tantalizing matchup for a bid to the championship.
Beating Western Carolina isn’t a given, of course. The Catamounts will be dangerous as long as Vonterius Woolbright—still battling Enrique Freeman for the D1 lead in double-doubles and holding it outright in triple-doubles—is on the court. But they’ve struggled to put pieces in place around him, something that clearly remains a work in progress as the conference tournament looms. Russell Jones Jr. has emerged as a meaningful threat from distance, both inside and outside the arc, but depth in the lineup is really lacking beyond the top two. A pair of fascinating games this week (vs Furman and at Chattanooga) will settle where WCU tries to start its championship run from, now needing a minor miracle to make it happen in this limited window.
In any given game against the rest of the top six, it’s been anybody’s guess whether Wofford keeps it impressively close (sometimes even winning) or gets kicked around the way their metrics suggest they should be. There’s been more of the latter than the former lately, though. The Terriers have dropped their last three on the trot, actually opening the door just a bit for red-hot Mercer to pass them. Wofford should hold onto the last top-six spot and get a place in the quarterfinals, as they go to VMI this week while Mercer has to play at the Mocs and Dins, but it’s gotten closer than it really should have.
Would you bet against the Bears winning one or both of these games, though? Sure, most of their major recent wins—over Furman, Samford, and most recently UNCG—have come courtesy of a scheduling quirk that gave them seven of their last eight games at home. But they had strong road performances at the start of this run, too: an 87-80 loss at Samford and, of course, a 70-64 win at UNC Greensboro. They probably need to win twice this week (both times as an underdog of about eight points) to finish in the top six, so it’s far from likely, but so is a lot of what they’ve done in the last month. I wouldn’t count the possibility out just yet.
East Tennessee State has spent the last few weeks playing out the tail of Brooks Savage’s first season, knowing it was likely to end with them landing in the play-in games, and mostly just setting up for the future. They’ve done admirably in spite of a very thin roster situation, and a win at The Citadel this week would mark an impressive feat: just a single Q4 loss throughout the season for the Buccaneers. They’re 8-1 as it stands; no other team ranked below #200 in NET has so few losses in so many games. It’s a solid foundation to build from, and one of the many reasons we’ve seen this year to be excited about what Savage can do when he gets his guys in the program.
It’s a bit of an open question whether next year will be a step back or forward in The Citadel’s rebuild; they should lose Quentin Millora-Brown and Elijah Morgan, key pieces of this year’s team, but Winston Hill is the only other upperclassman currently on the roster. The Bulldogs’ upset win over Chattanooga didn’t offer a whole lot of clarity on that point, necessarily, but it did show off the heights possible for both the departing and rising generations of Ed Conroy’s program. Seniors Millora-Brown and Morgan combined for 27 points and 16 rebounds, but sophomores Madison Durr and AJ Smith took the most shots and combined for 30 points and 6 assists in their own right. They look more than ready to lead this offense when the current dynamic duo is ready to give way.
It’s been over 30 years since VMI last finished with five or fewer wins in a season. It’s been over 40 since they finished with four or fewer. Barring an absolutely astonishing upset, both of those streaks will likely come to an end this season, and the Keydets will probably end the year with a 4-28 record, a firm contender for the worst team in the country. It’s been even longer—nearly 80 years—since VMI moved on from a coach after just two seasons, but it’s hard not to see that drought ending, too. There’s no immediately apparent future with Andrew Wilson, and I doubt one is about to develop.
Wofford named Scott Kull, the deputy athletics director for external affairs at Charlotte, its new athletic director. Samford won both the men’s and women’s Southern Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships, their fifth and ninth straight league titles in those sports. UNCG’s Maddie Spell and Anna White were named softball pitcher and player of the week, respectively; the Spartans’ Julien Peissel took home pitching honors in baseball, while Mercer’s Parker Lester secured the position-player award.