The SoCon Lowdown: Previewing Catamounts vs Bears, plus brief looks at two quarterfinals
March 2, 2022
Continuing our week of pre-tournament previews, this week we're looking ahead to the first-round game between Western Carolina and Mercer! Additionally, I'll make some predictions as to the results from the first round. Those opening games are just two days away!
First Round
#10 Western Carolina vs #7 Mercer
7:30 PM Friday (ESPN+)
Result at Mercer: MRCR 72, WCU 64 (January 22)
Result at Western Carolina: WCU 69, MRCR 65 (February 19)
Since joining the SoCon in 2014-15, Mercer (15-16, 8-10, #7) has pretty much spun its wheels in the middle of the conference. They've had relative peaks (12-6, 11-7 twice) and valleys (6-12), but outside of a surprising 2020-21 championship game run, all of their conference tournament outings been confined to the first round and the quarterfinals. Three years into Greg Gary's tenure, they don't appear to be going anywhere fast, and a 2-6 finish to this season has dropped them in the first round again, this time facing a dreadful WCU team that nonetheless beat them less than two weeks ago. To Gary's credit, though, the Bears have done well enough in the face of significant turnover. Four of the 2020-21 team's top seven players—Ross Cummings, Leon Ayers, Maciej Bender,and Jeffrey Gary—graduated after last season, leaving just three seniors on the roster for 2021-22.
On the upside, Felipe Haase and Jalen Johnson have developed into extremely versatile players that make that lack of depth more manageable. Both shot over four attempts from inside the line and over five from outside it per game, adding a combined 10.4 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 1.6 blocks on average. Throw in star sophomore Neftali Alvarez's .596 two-point shooting and you've got the bones of a pretty solid offence, though the overall numbers don't reflect it due to the Bears' glacial pace (67.5 possessions per game, 311th in D1 and second-slowest in the SoCon). Of course, if you're going to run an offence that limits both teams' possessions so much, it becomes particularly important to take advantage of the time your opponent spends with the ball. This is where things fell apart for the Bears, as they allowed a 53.0% effective field goal percentage (301st) and forced turnovers on just 16.0% of possessions (307th). Beyond James Glisson (4.0 defensive rebounds per game) and Kamar Robertson (team-high 2.8 personal fouls per game), nobody was doing much on the defensive end. Throwing Shawn Walker out there as a starter 27 times, only to watch him piece together the team's worst Torvik adjusted defensive rating, probably didn't help matters. Still, if Mercer can avoid a second upset at the hands of the Catamounts, their slow style could pose an annoying matchup for Furman in the second round, at least in theory.
First, however, they have to get past Western Carolina (11-20, 5-13, #10), who finished last in the SoCon this season—though not for lack of trying. Part of what makes this year's tournament unusually interesting is the fact that every team in it managed to eke out at least ten wins, which only the SoCon, ACC, and Big 12 have accomplished. Last year, Mercer was also a seven seed taking on the league's worst team, but that opponent was a lame-duck Samford with one win since New Year's Day (over WCU, of course), which ended up losing by 28. This year's ten seed is significantly better, and it carries five conference wins into this matchup, including two of its last three. I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out that, directly preceded and followed by pairs of sub-10 game scores on Torvik, the Catamounts somehow beat Chattanooga back in mid-January. SoCon basketball!
The way WCU beat the Mocs is a good blueprint for whatever path to success they may hope to follow: they didn't shoot the lights out from three (6-for-24), draw a ton of fouls (two fewer free throw attempts than Chattanooga), or pull down a boatload of rebounds (both teams totalled exactly 40). They simply turned the ball over about 40% less and parlayed those extra possessions into a winning margin. That is, however, not an easy feat to repeat, considering Mercer avoids turnovers decently and the Catamounts are normally terrible at forcing them (14.2% of opponent possessions, 346th). With the exception of Davion Everett, who defends excellently in low usage, the entire roster is middling to mediocre in adjusted defensive rating. The Bears do have players who WCU can pick on—Victor Baffuto's 28.5% turnover rate is far and away the highest on anyone with his usage—but the Catamounts don't really have players who can pick on Mercer.
Offensively, things are a bit more interesting, though Western Carolina doesn't have any huge weapons like Haase. Nick Robinson is the closest thing to a star player, leading the team with 14.8 points and 7.1 rebounds per game. Vonterious Woolbright and Travion McCray, averaging 20 points between them and leading the defensive effort (such as it is), round out the main trio. But the rest of the roster is more or less a mess: Marvin Price hasn't started a game but is tied for the highest usage rate on the team, while Cameron Bacote, Joe Petrakis, and Marcus Banks have all played in almost every game but do practically nothing aside from shooting threes. And don't even ask me what Tyler Harris's role is: he has a painfully average 49.7% effective field-goal shooting percentage, yet plays the third-highest percentage of minutes on the team. This roster certainly has its fair share of talent, and obviously they're capable of knocking off Mercer, considering they did it so recently. But if Western Carolina wants to get anywhere, both in this tournament and as a program, they're going to have to start showing they know how to fit these pieces together.
First Round Predictions
#9 The Citadel 85
#8 East Tennessee State 87 (OT)
I'm expecting a high-scoring opener to kick off the tournament. These two teams averaged 73 points apiece in their two regular-season meetings, and both play quickly on offence and...not very well on defence. Hayden Brown scores 24 in the losing effort and nearly leads an end-of-overtime comeback, but ETSU holds on and secures a showdown with Chattanooga in the second round.
#10 Western Carolina 68
#7 Mercer 61
It's easy to pick against either of these teams, given how the whole season has gone for WCU and how the last few weeks have gone for Mercer, but I'll take the relatively-hot Catamounts. The Bears lose fourteen turnovers, and while Jalen Johnson leads them to a dead heat until the final minutes, Western Carolina goes on a late run behind Vonterious Woolbright and Marlow Gilmore's excellent shooting in the paint, eventually pulling away to set up a chance for revenge against Furman.