The SoCon Lowdown: The case for Mikeal Brown-Jones
Plus: Another Woolbright triple-double and chaos across the conference
The chase for SoCon Player of the Year has been a foregone conclusion for a while. Vonterius Woolbright earned the preseason version of the honor and has put together a ludicrously great season to back it up, setting all kinds of records along the way. Just this week, he earned his seventh SoCon Player of the Week title, setting a school record for a career and drawing within one of Steph Curry’s eight-POTW campaign back in 2008-09, which hasn’t been surpassed since. The entire rest of the conference has won the award just five times this year; it really isn’t a contest, and I have no doubt we’ll be seeing Woolbright take home the hardware in a few weeks’ time.
That being said, statistically, there is a case for one other player: UNCG’s Mikeal Brown-Jones, who’s made a stunning and rapid ascent and is pretty clearly a top-two player in the league at this point. Torvik’s metrics would pin him as the POTY frontrunner ahead of Woolbright, and it’s not too hard to see why; he’s been nearly as effective (averaging 21.1/8.1/0.9 to his rival’s 21.5/12.8/5.6) while taking nearly four fewer shots per game and hitting shots from distance far more capably. As impressive as Woolbright’s been all season, Brown-Jones’ recent tear—averaging 31.5 points and 9.8 rebounds while going 37-for-61 (.607)—is as impressive as anything anybody in the SoCon has done all season.
Is it enough to overcame all the counting stats and records Woolbright has put up in his higher volume? Probably not, and for the record, I’d still stick with the presumptive winner at the moment. But Brown-Jones (who, let’s not forget, didn’t even start for the Spartans until February last season) has put together a remarkable season, and I’d say he deserves more of a look than he’s getting.
Samford took their first conference loss this week, a game at Furman that just got out of hand early, but as we’ll see, it doesn’t move the needle on them too much. In a particularly chaotic SoCon season, the Bulldogs still look like the clear favorite to win the regular-season and tournament titles, and it’s not like that loss is reason to doubt their big-game credentials—they still have wins over UNCG and WCU, after all. The program-record seventeen-game winning streak is behind them now, but after two upcoming road games against Chattanooga and UNCG, there’s very little that could keep them from going on a roll again. Really, the biggest concern is how much of a blow that loss was to Samford’s at-large chances, and even then they aren’t completely dead; at something like 30-4 with a SoCon title loss, they would have a strong case to make the tournament field.
Since rising to the top of the conference in 2022-23, Mike Jones’s UNCG has been defined by two traits: they really struggle to beat their best opponents, but without fail, they steamroll everybody else. The Spartans didn’t have a bad loss last season until two back-breaking, season-ending defeats by ETSU and Wofford…but they also missed out on the one seed because they went 1-3 against Furman and Samford. This year’s team was developing similarly—until this week, when they pulled off a stunning road victory over Western Carolina in overtime, then dropped an equally stunning clunker to Mercer at home. The latter game feels like an anomaly, and it doesn’t hurt UNCG in the standings all that much, but the WCU win is the landmark moment they’ve been looking for since the start of last season. The Spartans looked resilient in a tough road environment, weathered several major comebacks by the Catamounts, and got a phenomenal performance from Brown-Jones, who tied his one-week-old career high with 39 points and outdueled an equally stellar Woolbright.
It says a lot about the current state of the SoCon that Chattanooga is up here in a tie for second. The Mocs are a messy team in a lot of ways; they swing wildly between big wins and big losses, they have a record inflated by wins over all of the conference’s scuffling bottom four, and their best player wasn’t even eligible to play until a month and a half into the season. And yet, somehow…they almost belong here? I personally think WCU is a better team (and Chattanooga will have to find out if that’s true tomorrow, when they head to Cullowhee), but the Mocs have certainly weathered the chaos well enough to earn a fairly high ranking in the conference standings. The schedule is about to get significantly tougher, and I doubt they’ll be facing a play-in team in the quarterfinals, but they’re here for more of a reason than beating up on bottom-feeders…probably.
Well, Western Carolina is out of murderer’s row. It’s hard to know quite how to feel about the Catamounts’ three-game conference losing streak—it came against Samford, Furman, and UNCG, none of which are bad losses, but dropping two of those at home and generally getting nothing out of three big close-game opportunities is disappointing. Woolbright, as ever, was a bright spot, putting up 34 points and 15 rebounds against UNCG, then 18 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists as WCU let out its frustrations on a miserable VMI squad. It’s the sixth triple-double in program history, the third by Woolbright, and his second of the season, meaning he’s now tied for the D1 lead in triple-doubles and holds it outright in double-doubles. High volume is high volume, but it’s admittedly pretty obvious why he’s storming towards Player of the Year honors.
If you liked UNC Greensboro’s bizarre week, you’ll love the equally bewildering pair of performances put up by Furman in the same span. Already on a four-game winning streak and fresh off a huge win over Western Carolina, the Paladins started by defending home court against Samford in an even bigger victory, firmly solidifying themselves as SoCon contenders after weeks of struggle and uncertainty. Furman immediately went to a seemingly inferior Wofford and got stomped in a 77-67 loss. They shot 7-for-23—not from three, which had plagued them for a stretch earlier in the season, but from two. That’s the Paladins’ fewest made shots from inside the arc since 2012, and it knocked them right back down to the middle of the conference pack. There’s no telling where they go from here; their next four games all have projected spreads within three points on Torvik.
Speaking of Wofford, what’s up with this team? They started 4-1…because they played the conference’s four worst teams, by a mile, in their first five games. Predictably, they fell to 4-3…and then beat Furman, which was on the best run of form in the SoCon going into that game. Now they’re two games above .500 in conference play, yet metric underdogs in eight of their last ten games. I think they’ve earned some benefit of the doubt, but honestly, I have no idea how they’ve made it this far. If the defense keeps playing like it did against the Paladins, they should make it to the finish with a respectable record and maybe even avoid coming in sixth, but it’s hard to expect that from a team with a worse overall defensive efficiency than VMI.
As Jalyn McCreary goes, so goes Mercer. The Bears’ best player has been back from injury for a while, but his usage only recently crept up to its typical 20-30 minutes per game range. Of course, it’s hard to get playing time when you keep fouling, and he’s finished with 4 or 5 fouls in three of his last five appearances. He even fouled out in the win against UNC Greensboro, yet he still finished with a remarkable 15 points in 15 minutes and was the key to the Bears’ huge upset on the road. If they ever figure out how to use his unique skillset in a more meaningful way than just throwing him into the fray and having him go to the basket a bunch before leaving five minutes later, games like that will be more than once-in-a-blue-moon occurrences. But, y’know, it’s Greg Gary’s Mercer, so don’t hold your breath.
It’s important to keep in mind that we’re only looking for flashes of progress in Brooks Savage’s first season at ETSU. Last Saturday featured one of those; the Buccaneers came to play against Samford and battled the Bulldogs all the way to the end, eventually losing by three. Almost as exciting was the way their scoring was distributed—six players finished with eight or more points, from old standbys like Quimari Peterson and Jaden Seymour to up-and-comers like Karon Boyd and Gabe Sisk. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary, but seeing visible signs of progress and a plan for the future like this is always exciting. East Tennessee State might’ve struggled to eke out a win over VMI earlier in the week, but in terms of their vision for the future, this program feels like it’s in a much healthier place.
Speaking of teams that are in the position of seeking out glimmers of hope, The Citadel sadly qualifies for that definition by this point. There was a lot of optimism that Ed Conroy had put together a serious, consistent contender by year two of his return to Charleston, but the Bulldogs still direly lack depth; they don’t even really have five starters, though Keynan Davis looked better in that role against Chattanooga than he often has this season. The core is not bad, but Conroy evidently needs more time to bolster it—which will inevitably be something of a work in progress, since Elijah Morgan and Quentin Millora-Brown are due to leave after this season. The Citadel has no juniors on the roster, though, so I think we can safely pinpoint 2025-26 as the year they’ll look to be an all-out conference title contender.
The brief moment where VMI had something to play for this season seems to have passed, as they dropped a critical chance to get their second SoCon win against ETSU this week. All three of the Keydets’ home games against the other bottom-four teams are now behind them, and without pulling a major upset down the stretch, they’re probably headed for a last-place finish despite currently holding a tiebreaker over The Citadel. In the wake of this disappointing defeat, VMI promptly went 1-for-15 from three—its fewest made threes in a game since at least 2010—and trailed WCU by 30 at halftime on the way to a 102-77 loss. At least some things never seem to change around here.
Furman’s Megan Marvin was named SoCon Student-Athlete of the Week after winning the women’s 800m at the Carolina Challenge with a time of 2:09.63. Chattanooga and Wofford struggled with low-table foes Western Carolina and Mercer in women’s basketball, but both pulled away to maintain their hold of first and second in the conference standings. The league named a record 443 student-athletes to the Fall Academic All–Southern Conference Team, honoring those with a GPA of at least 3.3; Furman’s 62 selections led the way.