The SoCon Lowdown: Redefining the top tier (again)
Plus: Samford makes history and VMI gets on the board
2022-23 was a rather refreshing season for the Southern Conference in terms of clarity. By the end of January, we had an extremely clear idea of who the top contenders in the league were: Furman, UNCG, and Samford were all tied at 8-2, while no other team had a record better than 5-5. It wasn’t any closer in the final standings, which saw the Paladins and Bulldogs finish 15-3, the Spartans finished 14-2, and Western Carolina came in a distant fourth at 10-8.
This season has been far less predictable, at least in that sense. Tons of teams have had their moments, and it’s been extremely debatable how much value those moments have held. Samford and WCU, while not obvious picks for the leading group early in the season, both got off to extremely strong starts and have made their status clear. The likes of UNCG (upset Arkansas, but lost its last three D1 games going into SoCon play), Furman (reigning league champs, but had an awful non-con and started 0-2, then won four on the trot), and Wofford (expected to be plucky, now owners of a 4-2 conference record without a win by more than two points) are…harder to judge. As it is, though, we’ve got some semblance of order in the league standings: some six teams above .500, and four sitting at 1-5 or worse. So which of this six are actually, you know…good?
There is one slam dunk here. Samford has won seventeen games in a row, is the only remaining undefeated in conference play, just took down its top competition on the road, and is a runaway first in all metrics. There’s no real argument for considering them anything but the favorite to take home the league title; maybe there was a slight case that they lacked the superstar power of, say, Vonterius Woolbright–led WCU, until Achor Achor logged 35 points and 10 rebounds in the Bulldogs’ titanic win over the Catamounts and put that narrative to bed. The more interesting question is what this team could do in March, both in Asheville (where Bucky McMillan is just 1-3 in his career) and, if they make a run there, in the NCAA tournament. In any case, this season already marks historic success for Samford, which received its first AP Poll vote in program history on Monday1.
Aaaaand we’re out of obvious title contenders. Okay, UNCG is a pretty reasonable pick, having only lost to Samford in conference play, but there’s a glaring problem with this team: what have they really done, exactly? The Arkansas win is a feather in their cap, but the Razorbacks’ season have turned out mildly catastrophic, and that game was over two months ago in any case. The Spartans do have wins over Furman, Chattanooga, and Wofford, all members of a four-way tie at 4-2 in SoCon play, but none of those teams are obviously good in their own right, which makes it a bit hard to judge this one. In the big picture, we’re still waiting for Mike Jones’ UNCG to demonstrate that it can hang with the other top teams in the conference; their next test in that regard is tomorrow, when they head to Cullowhee and try to do what they couldn’t in Homewood.
If nothing else, Western Carolina is certainly the most fun team to watch in the SoCon. The Catamounts fell twice this week, at home against Samford and on the road against Furman, but they proved remarkably resilient in both games. Despite trailing by up to 11 points against both the Bulldogs and Paladins, WCU came storming back down the stretch twice—getting within a point of Samford on a late 7-2 run, then tying Furman with a three in the final 20 seconds. Both teams ultimately made plays to escape with victories, but it’s hard to argue the Cats didn’t look like a clear conference contender in the process. Oh, and one quick note: Vonterius Woolbright posted two more double-doubles, giving him 11 in a row (more than halfway to Jerry West’s 64-year-old conference record for such a streak) and 16 on the season, now the most in D1.
Furman did something unusual in that monumental, season-redefining victory over WCU: they shot fewer than 20 threes. (Okay, they shot 19, but hang with me, okay?) That’s something they hadn’t done all season—notably, not even in the disastrous loss to non-D1 Anderson, when they went 2-for-20 from distance—and have only done 17 times in Bob Richey’s 212 games at the helm. They’ve also won the last 13 of those games in a row; clearly, it’s a good reset button for the Paladins when their defense-stretching strategy is coming up empty too often on that costly three-point volume. So, naturally, the shot that gave Furman the lead with six-tenths of a second left was…a well-defended, not particularly well-chosen three from JP Pegues. Sometimes, you just gotta go back to what you’re good at.
I think it’s fairly unobjectionable to say that the four teams listed above are all major contenders for the regular-season and postseason titles. Sure, Samford is clearly a step ahead as it stands, but it’s a long season and January is way too early to take a single team against the field in Asheville. The pairing in the middle here, though, is a lot harder to make sense of. Chattanooga has looked like three different teams in three different pairs of SoCon games: a dominant, multifaceted powerhouse in blowouts of Furman and VMI, a capable, yet mortal contender in going-away wins over Mercer and ETSU this week, and an uninspiring also-ran in blowout losses to Samford and UNCG. Personally, I’m leaning away from top-tier status for the Mocs, given their inconsistency and the way Trey Bonham’s arrival hasn’t produced a noticeable offensive jump.
I feel a good deal more confident declaring that Wofford also isn’t a strong threat to the SoCon’s top dogs. Beating the four worst teams in the league by an average of one and a half points isn’t a particularly sustainable way to win, and the schedule gets a lot tougher from here on. In their first game against top competition, the Terriers did make a major comeback to only lose by four, but they didn’t repeat the feat against UNCG and now have two SoCon losses in which they trailed by an average of 9.2 points. There’s a world where this team is more of a going concern, but it requires a serious step up on defense—they haven’t held any D1 opponent under 70 points since December 6.
What happened to this team? Just a few weeks ago, ETSU was 9-5, had won five of its last six going into conference play, and won its first conference game comfortably against Mercer. They haven’t done a thing since, dropping five in a row and looking severely outmatched by everybody except Wofford (which is a matter of concern in its own right, of course). The offense is one-dimensional—they’re shooting an abysmal .293 from three—and the defense isn’t even that, struggling to stop anything lately. At least the slate gives them a chance to get out of this hole: a trip to VMI awaits, and back-to-back home games against The Citadel and Wofford will offer more good winning opportunities early in February.
Losing to Samford by only seven is, honestly, probably the most inspiring thing Mercer has done in conference play. Even that is arguably less impressive than it looks: the Bulldogs were up by double digits within the first ten minutes and stayed there most of the way, only briefly letting the Bears narrow the gap in the second half before pulling away again. The bottom four are all close to locks for the play-in games in Asheville, if not clearly headed that way already (hi, VMI), but Mercer might be the surest thing, despite not being the worst of the bunch. Going on a run to get out of their current position, after all, would be interesting, and this team seems determined to avoid ever being that.
Oh, uh…hi, VMI! The Keydets are still last in the conference’s Torvik rankings by exactly 100 places—and among the bottom five in all of D1—but, for the first time since 2022, they’re not last in the conference standings. That dubious honor now belongs to The Citadel, as VMI pulled off a much-needed home win in a battle of winless SoCon teams to secure their first D1 win of the season. Andrew Wilson is, in all likelihood, less than two months away from the end of his stint overseeing this struggling program, but you’ve gotta admit, it was nice to see him having fun for once amid an exuberant court storm.
Everybody around this program, Ed Conroy most of all, understands that The Citadel can be better than this—not just in theory, but in practice, as in that incredible 20-point win over Notre Dame just over a month ago. The Bulldogs have had an uncharacteristically rough run of form and, admittedly, gotten a bit unlucky during this 0-6 start, but it hardly feels likely that they’ll finish here. Home games against the other three bottom-feeders are all still ahead, starting with Mercer this week, and hopefully The Citadel should be able to claw its way out of last sooner rather than later.
In addition to Samford’s debut in the AP Poll’s receiving-votes section, Bucky McMillan also earned national recognition, being named National Coach of the Week by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello. A day after being named SoCon Player of the Week for the sixth time this season, Wofford’s Rachael Rose was named to the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Award watch list in women’s basketball. Mercer football announced the hiring of Mike Jacobs, whose 74-17 record at Notre Dame (Ohio) and Lenoir-Rhyne ranks sixth in NCAA Divisions I and II, as its next head coach.
Source: The All-Time AP Poll, an Eli Powell original by Eli Powell.