The SoCon Lowdown: The regular season comes to a close and the tournament field is set
February 28, 2022
With East Tennessee State surprising UNC-Greensboro to end the year, the SoCon's dramatic regular season is finally over. But in the four days before the conference tournament starts, there's plenty to discuss: the SoCon Player of the Year and all-conference teams will be released this week, and we'll look ahead to the first-round games between ETSU and The Citadel as well as Mercer and Western Carolina. For today, though, we'll start off by recapping the final regular-season game and take a bird's-eye view of the tournament bracket.
East Tennessee State 73
UNC-Greensboro 69
This season, the difference between third in the SoCon and seventh was just two games: 10-8 to 8-10. That means we've got a pileup of teams in the middle of the rankings (Samford, Wofford, VMI, UNCG, and Mercer) who we still don't fully understand. That sets up a very exciting tournament, but it does leave us with a lack of clear narrative on most of these teams. Case in point: UNC-Greensboro (17-13, 9-9, #6), which dropped their home finale against the apparently-overmatched Buccaneers and raised more questions about where exactly they fit into this hierarchy. As mentioned yesterday, they're a team that's capable of beating Chattanooga and Furman while turning the ball over 14 or 15 times, but they're also capable of losing to literally any team aside from Western Carolina. Pit them against super-hot Samford, as the bracket does thanks to this result, and who knows what'll happen?
As for East Tennessee State (15-16, 7-11, #8), they've resolved into more of a backmarker recently, though their stretch run does offer some hope that they can make noise in the tournament. They'll have to go up against the regular-season champions on short rest if they do win their play-in game, but never say never. The key to what success they've had is their starting lineup's depth: the Brewer brothers (Ty and Ledarrius), Jordan King, David Sloan, and even Mohab Yasser are all capable of having a major impact. The Buccaneers won this game despite having only those five players and Jaden Seymour, but the Brewers, King, Sloan, and Yasser all scored 9 or more points and racked up 28 rebounds. Shorthanded and short-rested though they may be, this is not a team Chattanooga will take lightly if they advance to the quarterfinals.
We've also finally got a tournament bracket to look at! #7 Mercer will face #10 Western Carolina, who they lost to just over a week ago, in the first round, while #9 The Citadel battles #8 East Tennessee State. The winners of those games will take on #1 Chattanooga and #2 Furman, respectively, while #4 Wofford and #3 Samford look to hold off challenges from #5 VMI and #6 UNC-Greensboro.
We'll take a look at these games starting tomorrow, running through the four matches we know before the tournament gets going. We'll also take a look at the end-of-season honours, and we might have a round table on playoff predictions as well! It's shaping up to be an exciting week on the SoCon Lowdown as we look forward to an intriguing conference tournament.