The SoCon Lowdown: It's anyone's game
Plus: Woolbright makes history and Samford walks the tightrope
Last year, three teams—Furman, Samford, and UNCG—went into the SoCon tournament head and shoulders above the rest of the league. Two of them lost their first game in the quarterfinals, leading to a 6 and 7 seed in the semifinals and Chattanooga, the 7 seed, nearly winning the tournament outright. From that chaos, Furman emerged and pulled a massive upset in the NCAA tournament, shocking Virginia on JP Pegues’ game-winning three with just seconds left.
So when it comes to Asheville, two things are true: it’s impossible to predict what’ll happen, and what does happen could decide who comes up with the conference’s next stunner in March Madness. What more is there to say? If you’re not tuned in this weekend, you’re missing out.
In Asheville, Samford is facing massive opportunity—and pressure. The Bulldogs have been the class of the SoCon this season under Bucky McMillan, but they’ve had occasional duds this year, including losses at Mercer and Wofford in the last few weeks. One loss would end any hopes of the best team in program history getting the NCAA tournament bid it deserves, and McMillan might get a few calls from open P6 jobs over the offseason. This is their moment, but they’ve got to take full advantage of it.
As was the case last year, UNC Greensboro has been solid this season, but has struggled to get quite on the level of the conference’s top tier in actual head-to-head games. They wouldn’t meet Samford in the tournament unless both make the title game, but they have things to prove before that point, too. Last year’s upset loss to Wofford in the quarterfinals hasn’t been forgotten, and there’s a very good chance UNCG meets East Tennessee State in their first tournament game this year—the same team they lost to in their regular-season finale. Another early exit would raise a lot of questions about what Mike Jones can do to raise the ceiling here, even with the success he’s had early in his tenure.
Chattanooga was never expected to be a contender this season, working with a mishmash of a roster that runs the gamut from former VMI teammates Honor Huff and Trey Bonham to Pepperdine transfer Jan Zidek to emerging pieces like Sam Alexis and Randy Brady. That former Keydet duo has gone a long way towards making the Mocs surprisingly capable in a transition year, and if they play to the ceiling they’re capable of, another run to the title game is hardly out of the question. Maybe Chattanooga seems a bit too incomplete to contend properly, but it hasn’t stopped them yet.
The metrics continue to insist that Western Carolina is the best bet to upend Samford in the tournament, and down the stretch, it started to look like they might actually be right. The Catamounts’ only wins between January 16 and February 21 came against the four teams that ended up in the play-in games, a dismal run of countless close losses to better competition that they finally snapped last week. Even more significant than WCU’s win over Furman, which proved they can still hang with the top teams: Vonterius Woolbright’s 15-point, 10-rebound, 11-assist performance in it. That game was his fourth triple-double of the season, and he recorded another in the Catamounts’ following game as they defeated Chattanooga. He’s the second player in Division I history to record five triple-doubles in a single season, needing only one to match the record of six set by BYU’s Kyle Collinsworth in 2014-15 and 2015-16.
It’s been a rocky title defense for Furman, and they head to nearby Asheville in the midst of a rough stretch capped by a home loss to Mercer last Saturday. But we know the ‘dins are capable of going on a run—this is still one of three teams to beat Samford in league play this season—and an experienced roster is a key point in their favor in these win-or-go-home games. Senior Marcus Foster has been an anchor, and there’s nobody better for a clutch shot in the SoCon than Pegues, who’s hit one after another since that landmark moment against Virginia. Their path is far from easy, with a quarterfinal matchup against WCU and likely a semifinal against Samford, but they know what it’s like to shock the world in the postseason.
We’re officially done doubting Wofford. Alright, so Samford was pretty severely understaffed in their trip to Spartanburg, missing Achor Achor and AJ Staton-McCray due to injury in a game that was irrelevant to the already-crowned regular-season champs. But it’s impossible not to be impressed by a 91-69 win against the best team in the conference, regardless of the circumstances. The Terriers are for real, and more capable of a run than you might think—they’re on the relatively easy side of the bracket, drawing a Chattanooga team that’s no stranger to upset losses, then most likely a UNCG team that they knocked off early in the tournament last season.
East Tennessee State doesn’t really feel like it belongs in the play-in, especially after surprising UNC Greensboro in the last game of the regular season, but dispatching VMI shouldn’t be much harder than just getting a bye into the quarterfinals. What’s more interesting is the rematch with UNCG that awaits if the Buccaneers win here—a game they obviously can win, but also one that’ll be difficult. Like Wofford, the tournament bracket breaks in favor of a potential ETSU run, though one win would be more than enough to feel good about the Bucs’ first year under Brooks Savage.
Mercer enters the tournament on an utterly inexplicable tear, having gone 5-2 in games above Q4 since January 27 after going 1-23 in such games dating to the start of 2022-23. With the heater they’ve been on, they should take care of business against The Citadel and get a quarterfinal matchup against Samford, a game that would be a lot more interesting than the teams’ respective records and ratings would suggest. The Bears beat the Bulldogs just three weeks ago, and they put up a solid showing in their trip to Pete Hanna Center, too. Chaos is always a possibility in Asheville, and Mercer is one of the best-positioned teams to unleash it.
Let’s not forget, though, that one of The Citadel’s three conference wins was against Mercer, and that this team’s ceiling is a lot higher than its record suggests—they beat Notre Dame OOC, of course, but they also pulled off a surprise win against Chattanooga late in the season. If their defense can come up big, they’re capable of hanging with some really good opponents; that’s an open question for a team that ranks 265th in adjusted efficiency on defense, but there’s a reason the projected line against Mercer is still tight despite the Bears’ recent surge.
Well, it’s almost time for VMI to ask themselves the question that’s loomed over this season from the start: should Andrew Wilson get a third year? He took over a tough situation and hasn’t had a lot of time to make improvements, but the Keydets are absolutely awful, one loss away from finishing with a single D1 win all season. I’ve been clear about thinking VMI should probably move on, but whoever they hire next would be in an even rougher situation after Wilson’s tenure so far. On some level, it’s a question of whether he can be trusted to keep his players in Lexington; this season has been as bad as his first because transfers and graduations led to an almost completely reset roster, and they cannot let that happen again.
Georgia Southern won its third consecutive SoCon title in rifle, with sophomore Emma Pohlmann sweeping Athlete of the Year honors across the smallbore and air rifle divisions. The league’s women’s basketball tournament got underway, with top-four seeds Chattanooga, UNCG, Wofford, and Mercer competing in the semifinals today; Wofford’s Rachael Rose was also named one of five finalists for the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Award.
In men’s basketball, Western Carolina’s Vonterius Woolbright took home Player of the Week honors for the ninth time this season, finally breaking Steph Curry’s longstanding single-season record in the conference, and was unsurprisingly named Player of the Year, WCU’s first time winning the award since 1997-98 (Bobby Phillips, coaches POTY). Samford HC Bucky McMillan was named Coach of the Year, while JP Pegues (Furman), Mikeal Brown-Jones (UNCG), Achor Achor (Samford), and Trey Bonham (Chattanooga) rounded out the all-conference first team.