The SoCon Lowdown: Previewing Bulldogs vs Buccaneers, plus picks for conference awards
March 1, 2022
Welcome to March! This week, we're looking ahead to the SoCon Tournament, which will be held from Friday through Monday in Asheville, North Carolina. With four games already set, we'll preview one each day, but we've also got more to discuss around the league. The all-conference teams are set to be announced this week, so in addition to previewing ETSU vs The Citadel, I'll also make my picks for the top five and for Player of the Year.
First Round
#9 The Citadel vs #8 East Tennessee State (-3.5)
5:00 PM Friday (ESPN+)
Result at East Tennessee State: CIT 75, ETSU 73 (January 22)
Result at The Citadel: ETSU 77, CIT 67 (February 19)
The East Tennessee State (15-16, 7-11, #8) win in this matchup in February was also the last time the Buccaneers brought more than six players to a game, but that hasn't stopped them from competing well: they gave Chattanooga a decent fight and upset would-be four-seed UNC-Greensboro on Sunday. For first-year head coach Desmond Oliver, carrying a six-man roster into a tournament in need of four wins in four days is a surprisingly familiar feeling; he was an assistant for the 2007-08 Georgia team that did just that. But despite ending up eighth in the ten-team SoCon, ETSU isn't as bad relative to its conference as the Bulldogs were that year. The Buccaneers were far closer to the muddled middle of the pack—Samford, Wofford, UNCG, VMI, and Mercer all went between 10-8 and 8-10—then the struggling pair of teams at the back. The reason they landed here can be attributed to a hard-luck losing streak across late January and early February, in which ETSU lost five straight by two, four, four, three, and two points. But this is still a quality team, as some of their marquee wins demonstrate: they dispatched Murray State and Missouri State in an early-season tournament (joining Auburn as one of only two teams to defeat the Racers) and later shocked Georgia and Furman. So it's not like this team can't go on a run, even if the impending quarterfinal matchup with Chattanooga makes for a tough draw.
What makes ETSU an intriguing dark horse is their depth, despite how short their bench is. In a conference where most teams were led by one or two clear stars, the Buccaneers' top four were all on pretty much the same wavelength. The versatile Brewer brothers, Tyron and Ledarrius, combined to take 22 shots and score 25.2 points per game, and they also rank first and second on the team with 6.6 and 5.3 rebounds per outing. Jordan King currently leads Ledarrius for the team scoring crown, averaging 14.7 points per game and comfortably leading the team in three-point shooting. But King's skillset is the most limited of the main quartet—he averages 3.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists, and 0.7 steals, and isn't much of a factor on the defensive end. Balancing out the group is David Sloan, who shoots decently from any range and leads ETSU with 5.1 assists and 1.7 steals per game. This lineup isn't perfect—for one thing, it's clearly lacking in defence, ranking 335th of 358 teams in defensive rating. But the fact that each of the Buccaneers' big four has a lot to offer could take them a long way in the postseason.
The biggest question facing this team: which of their two options do they hand the final starting spot to? Jaden Seymour hasn't started nigh-upon every game like the top four, but he is the most consistent member of the lineup; that being said, it's unclear how much the Wichita State transfer has earned that role. In the Buccaneers' upset over UNCG to end the regular season, he played 24 minutes and took all of two shots, missing both. (He also made two free throws, added one steal, one block, and one rebound, and ended up fouling out.) Meanwhile, Mohab Yasser stepped up as the lone man off ETSU's bench, playing 29 minutes, scoring 15 points, securing five rebounds, and hitting two critical free throws to effectively seal the win. Yasser has scored 12, 15, and 15 in the Bucs' last three games, but he's only started twice in his career, and both times resulting in dismal outings, with a combined 3-for-9 shooting and 3.5 points per game. You'd think a lineup decision wouldn't be the toughest thing for a six-man team to figure out, but here we are.
As for The Citadel (12-17, 6-12, #9), their minutes distribution breaks down similarly, but their top four isn't nearly as uniform. Hayden Brown is the headliner, averaging 9.3 two-point attempts and 5.7 makes, plus 9.4 rebounds, 1.1 steals, and 18.5 points, all team-leading figures. The fifth-year player has a solid case for Player of the Year, albeit a longshot one, but The Citadel has never matched his abilities, going 20-68 in the SoCon during his career. Offensively, this team is actually pretty good, with Jason Roche adding 13.3 points per game (almost all on three-point shots) to round out a very solid top two. But their defence makes ETSU's look downright competent: it ranks 307th in defensive rating, 290th in Torvik's adjusted efficiency, and 346th in straight-up points allowed per game. It'd actually be pretty much mediocre if it weren't for The Citadel's dismal 10.0 turnovers forced per game: 340th in D1 and virtually tied with VMI and WCU for dead last in the SoCon.
The Bulldogs' defensive play might be extremely lacking, but when pitted against the similarly-challenged ETSU, it should make for an extremely fun tournament opener. Filling out the main lineup are Tyler Moffe, whose two- and three-point distribution is unusually balanced (5.1 and 4.7 attempts per game respectively), and Stephen Clark, who averages 4.6 defensive rebounds, 2.5 blocks, and 3.1 personal fouls per game, encompassing pretty much the entirety of The Citadel's defensive efforts outside of Brown. The remaining spot is typically filled by a combination of David Maynard (13 starts, 6.1 PPG), Brent Davis (14 starts, 5.2 PPG), and Rudy Fitzgibbons (5.1 three-point attempts per game, 8.4 PPG).
The best way for the Bulldogs to make this interesting is probably to try and studiously avoid turnovers, which is certainly possible: ETSU ranked only 304th in turnovers forced per game. When The Citadel loses the ball ten times or less, they're 7-3 with a win and a close loss against Samford (both after they turned the corner) as well as a win over Pitt. Meanwhile, when East Tennessee State forces ten turnovers or less, they're 5-9 with a losses to WCU—and they only forced 12 turnovers in both of their games against The Citadel this year. They stayed in those games, and won one of them, only because they managed to lose just six and seven turnovers. Ball security will be pivotal in this game as the short-handed Buccaneers battle the backsliding Bulldogs.
SoCon Lowdown All-Conference Picks
All-Conference Team
G: Ques Glover, Samford (19.1 PPG, 2.9 RPG, 4.4 APG)
G: Malachi Smith, Chattanooga (20.3 PPG, 6.6 RPG, 3.2 APG)
F: Jalen Slawson, Furman (14.6 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 3.9 APG)
F: Hayden Brown, The Citadel (18.5 PPG, 9.4 RPG, 2.4 APG)
C: Jake Stephens, VMI (19.3 PPG, 9.2 RPG, 3.3 APG)
Player of the Year: Ques Glover, Samford. This is an incredibly close race, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Chattanooga's Malachi Smith—the league leader with 20.3 points per game—claim top honours. (I also wouldn't be entirely shocked if VMI's Jake Stephens or The Citadel's Hayden Brown nicked the award.) But there's something to be said for the fact that beyond Smith, the Mocs had a wealth of talent this season. Would they still have won the regular-season title if they'd built around David Jean-Baptiste and Silvio De Sousa instead? Maybe, maybe not, but it's immediately apparent that Samford wouldn't be where they are if they'd had to rely on Logan Dye and Jermaine Marshall.
The former Florida transfer played twenty-seven games and scored double digits in twenty-six, 15+ in twenty, 20+ in fifteen, and 25+ in four. And he was impressive enough before Samford hit its stride in late January, already the clear team leader after two years riding the bench in Gainesville. But the Bulldogs' late-season run from 1-6 bottom-feeder to 10-8 three-seed was fueled by a staggering run by Glover, who averaged 20.9 points during the 9-2 stretch and put up 30-, 26-, and 26-point games within a six-game run late in the season. What's most impressive about his game, though, is that he doesn't fit the mold of the typical superstar outshining an otherwise-unimpressive mid-major roster. Glover's 4.4 rebounds per game were second in the SoCon, and he shot the third-most free throws in the league despite not ranking in the top twenty in minutes played. As the most complete player in a conference that perhaps has a reputation for more one-dimensional stars, Glover is my pick for Player of the Year.
Freshman of the Year: Honor Huff, VMI. It's hard to see this going to anybody aside from Huff and Jason Roche, but it's an interesting debate between those two. Roche's 13.3 points per game and bigger role for the Bulldogs (36 minutes per game to Huff's 27) are appealing, but his game didn't go far beyond his three-point shooting and rebounding. What's more, he finished the season on a very cold streak, scoring 6, 11, 9, 6, 8, and 6 points in The Citadel's final six games. Meanwhile, Huff closed the season with eight double-digit performances in his last nine games, including scoring 19, 22, and 20 in his final five. In either case, the SoCon Player of the Year Debates in 2024 and 2025 are shaping up to be very interesting if both Roche and Huff continue on this trajectory. (Though hopefully The Citadel starts to match Roche's excellence in the way it failed to for Brown.)
Defensive Player of the Year: Jalen Slawson, Furman. There's no real choice here. Slawson was the only player to rank in the top five in rebounds, steals, and blocks per game, and he handily outpaced the field with a 3.6 defensive box plus/minus. Chattanooga's fantastic defence had several contenders, but Slawson did it all for a solid Furman unit that finished fourth in the SoCon in points allowed per game, and leading the league in steals is just the icing on the cake.
Coach of the Year: Lamont Paris, Chattanooga. I heavily considered Bucky McMillan for this honour, and he does match the usual Coach of the Year expectation—Samford was downright dreadful last year and soared to unexpected heights this season thanks to a midseason turnaround. But the eye test suggests Ques Glover was most responsible for that rebound, and metrics propose that luck played the biggest part. Instead, the honour goes to Chattanooga's Lamont Paris, who did an excellent job wrangling an odd combination of skills from 9-7 to their first SoCon title in six seasons. Now, the question is: can he keep the party going through the conference tournament and get them back to March Madness as well?