The SoCon Lowdown: The weirdest team in the league
Plus: Wofford's continued murkiness and VMI's one seed
Alright, let’s talk about Mercer.
The Bears are a bad basketball team. This was pretty likely once it became obvious that Greg Gary would be coaching them for a fifth season; they’ve finished 17-15, 18-11, 16-17, and 14-19 under his watch, and there was little reason to think things would improve this year. Mercer proceeded to lose to non-D1 Clark Atlanta in its first game of the season and finished their non-conference slate without a win higher than Q4. They looked terrible, and continued to do so during a miserable 1-6 start in SoCon play.
Since then, they’ve been…not terrible? Well, at times, anyway. The Bears have gone on a profoundly bizarre 4-3 run in which they’ve beaten UNCG (on the road), Furman, and Samford…while also scoring 49 points against ETSU and 46 against WCU. Their best and worst performances of the season have both come in this span, and somehow, neither of them was their stunning victory this week over the league-leading Bulldogs, who entered having won 23 of their last 24 games.
Basketball! It’s weird.
In a lot of ways, the Mercer loss doesn’t really matter for Samford. They’re still in firm command of the league standings, two games up with four to play, and dropping an upset to the Bears doesn’t seem indicative of a larger downward trend—some of this team’s most impressive games came right before this disappointment. But it’s a disastrous black mark on their résumé, making it unlikely they’ll get a tournament bid unless they win the conference tournament. It stings that Samford would likely miss the bracket at 29-5, especially given the SoCon’s impressive non-conference showing, but it’s doubtful they would make the field.
UNC Greensboro has been one of the more consistent forces in a rather chaotic conference over the past couple years: often struggling to compete with the other leading contenders, but rarely struggling to put away the bottom-feeders. This week was a good reminder of how efficiently they can dispatch weaker opponents, as they steamrolled The Citadel and Wofford, trailing for a total of just 38 seconds across both games. The Spartans should be in good shape for Asheville provided Furman stays in fourth; that would give them the tiebreaker over Chattanooga for second in the standings, a key difference because the two seed would likely face one of the four teams with losing conference records in the quarterfinals.
Chattanooga, on the other hand, would currently be in line to face Western Carolina or Wofford, neither of which would be an easy draw by any stretch of the imagination. The Mocs are in this position thanks to a blowout loss at Furman on Sunday, but they have a solid chance to climb back into second thanks to an easy schedule down the stretch. The Catamounts and Terriers, as it happens, are also their toughest remaining opponents, and they get both in Chattanooga, starting with Wofford this week on Wednesday.
Crushing the Mocs seems to confirm that that Furman has emerged from their recent slump, and they’ve done so with a rather solid 9-5 conference record intact. They’re still just a game ahead of WCU and Wofford, though, and hardly assured of placing fourth ahead of those two. Like Chattanooga, they get both of those teams in their final four games—not to mention a trip to the Pete Hanna Center this week, where nobody has won since the Paladins themselves did it in February of 2023.
Case in point about how hard it is to win at the Pete: Western Carolina just lost there by a whopping 26 points. The Catamounts have struggled a bit to pick up wins in SoCon play lately, sure, but their previous five league losses had come by a combined total of just 18 points. In many ways, that defeat also felt like a wake-up call to WCU about how far they need to go to reach their potential and compete at the top of the conference again. They’ll get a few more final tests before the conference tournament, starting with a critical visit to UNCG this week.
Aaaand Wofford’s back to looking like they don’t belong with the top teams. Given their season-ending schedule (at Chattanooga, at Furman, vs Samford, at VMI), the Terriers seem likely to finish 1-3 and end up right at 9-9, which feels fitting. Every other SoCon team has been solidly in the top or bottom divisions of the league for weeks now, yet Wofford’s true skill remains elusive, even if their record places them comfortably above the baseline (for now, anyway). Who knows, though? They’ve pulled upsets on a few occasions in league play, and it wouldn’t be too surprising for them to knock off the Mocs or Dins on the road.
East Tennessee State’s brief hopes of climbing out of the bottom four, fueled by a 4-1 run that put them within a game of .500, have firmly faded now. The Buccaneers have dropped three straight, and a tenth loss is certainly coming with a trip to Samford still on the schedule. They haven’t really looked bad in this recent skid, though, with close losses against both Furman and Western Carolina. Brooks Savage has done a commendable job at the helm this season, and ETSU isn’t gonna be a fun team to face for the two seed, assuming the standings hold steady. Well, and assuming that if they do, ETSU beats VMI in the play-in round. (They will.)
So, yeah, I have no idea what to make of this team. Should they still fire Greg Gary at the earliest opportunity? I…think so? As bewildering and impressive as the Bears’ upsets have been lately, they’ve also continued to put in awful performances at a reliable rate; their 79-46 loss to WCU was, by game score, their worst single outing of the season thus far1. Even more significant, though, is that these stunners really haven’t changed much for Mercer—they’re still headed for a play-in game and still almost certain to finish with a losing record again, probably declining in win rate for the third consecutive season. I’m still skeptical that this coaching tenure is going much of anywhere, despite recent results.
The Citadel entered last weekend sitting at 1-12 in conference play, having lost six straight games and not defeated a D1 team by more than a single basket since…uh, when they beat Notre Dame by 20. Anyway, that team proceeded to absolutely wallop VMI, cruising to a 25-point win that elevated the Bulldogs out of ninth in the standings, most likely for good. Their defensive showing in that game, holding the Keydets to a meager 51 points, might just have been a flash in the pan, but there’s a chance they’ve rediscovered the strong performance on that side of the ball which spearheaded their 8-5 start. It’d definitely make their tournament outlook a lot more interesting, so here’s hoping we get more signs of life from a team that clearly has a high ceiling.
VMI is very, very bad. I’ve written more words about that this year than any sane human being probably should, so why don’t I borrow a few from our frequent partners over at The Low Major? The Keydets were a one seed in their recent March Badness top 16 reveal (a placement which, I’ll admit, I lobbied pretty hard for), beating out IUPUI on the strength of an absolutely dismal -0.75 WAB per game. Their average result is the third-worst of any team in D1—and that was before they got blown out by the second-worst team in the SoCon. They are, to put it shortly…very, very bad.
The Southern Conference’s women’s basketball championship has been moved from ESPN+ to ESPNU; it’ll be the first time the game has been broadcast on national television. UNCG’s Caleb Cozart (.545, four home runs) and Samford’s Michael Ross (6 IP, 1 H) were named player and pitcher of the week in baseball, respectively. In softball, ETSU’s Sara Muir (.556, 3 doubles; 13 IP, 8 pitching strikeouts) and Furman’s Taylor Miller (5 IP, 1 ER) earned the honors.
This metric, to be fair, doesn’t cover non-D1 games. Losing to Clark Atlanta by any margin is probably worse than getting blown out by Western Carolina.