February 25, 2022
Ahead of four games on Saturday and one on Sunday (ETSU at UNCG), the SoCon Tournament picture is finally starting to take shape. Two teams are already locked into their positions: regular-season champion Chattanooga will take the top seed, while poor 4-13 Western Carolina will finish tenth. But every other team is within a game of another, which makes the postseason scenarios pretty complex. Let's take a look and see what could happen.
Play-in scenarios
The most important question is which team will end up in seventh, as that's the last remaining spot for the play-in games. Chattanooga, Furman, and Samford are all safe, while ETSU, The Citadel, and Western Carolina are guaranteed to play on the Friday of tournament weekend. With the exception of Samford earning a bye, which they've done with an impressive 9-1 run, most of this has been obvious for a while, but the question of who will end up playing that extra game has been anything but clear. As it stands, UNC-Greensoboro, Wofford, and VMI are all 9-8 and fill out the fourth, fifth, and sixth spots, while Mercer's upset loss at the hands of The Citadel on Wednesday dropped them to 8-9 and sole possession of seventh.
If Mercer can't pull out a win at Wofford, that seventh-place rank will solidify and they'll be guaranteed to face WCU in the first round (ETSU and The Citadel are already certain to play in the 8-vs-9 game). However, if the Bears do outduel the Terriers, things will get more complicated. Both teams would be 9-9, and the key to sorting out the middle of the standings would be the results from UNCG (against ETSU) and VMI (against WCU). That gives us four scenarios to look at if Mercer wins:
If UNCG and VMI both win, Mercer simply wins the head-to-head tiebreaker by virtue of sweeping the Terriers, and it's Wofford that gets saddled with the seventh seed.
If UNCG wins and VMI loses, we get a three-way tiebreaker with VMI, Mercer, and Wofford—but because VMI split the season series with both of the other teams, Mercer's sweep of Wofford still drops them into seventh.
If UNCG loses and VMI wins, things are a little more interesting: Mercer would have the sweep over both teams in this tie, which would lead to a two-way tiebreaker between UNCG and Wofford. This comes down to their records against conference-leading Chattanooga, which yet again leads to Wofford ending up last.
But if UNCG and VMI both lose, we get a gargantuan four-way tiebreaker with all of these teams. Mercer fares particularly well in this scenario, with a 5-1 record against the other 9-9 teams that would land them in fourth. VMI's 3-3 record is next, placing them fifth, and UNCG and Wofford are both 2-4 in the tie and split the season series with each other. Once again, Wofford is on the outside looking in thanks to their 0-2 record against the SoCon's top team.
In every case, the Terriers are the odd team out, but the standings above them aren't quite the same.
If UNCG and VMI both win, the #4-through-#7 standings are: VMI, UNCG, Mercer, Wofford (VMI beats UNCG by virtue of better record against Mercer)
If UNCG wins and VMI loses: UNCG, VMI, Mercer, Wofford
If UNCG loses and VMI wins: VMI, Mercer, UNCG, Wofford
If UNCG and VMI both lose: Mercer, VMI, UNCG, Wofford
As for the actual tournament games: #4 and #5 would play each other, while #6 would face #3 Furman/Samford and #7 would have to play #10 Western Carolina for the right to face #2 Furman/Samford. Speaking of which...
Furman and Samford scenarios
The other undecided situation in the standings is the chase for second and third overall, which has the potential to end up with one or two teams from above involved because of how close the teams are. As it stands, Furman is the odds-on favourite to end up with the second seed, while Samford is trying to close a one-game gap to them while also avoiding interference from the teams one game behind themselves (UNC-Greensboro, Wofford, and VMI).
It's fairly likely that things will simplify immensely on Saturday; if either of the top two win, most of the scenarios would be eliminated. If Furman wins (at The Citadel), they clinch the second seed; if Samford wins (at Chattanooga), they clinch a top-three seed. If both teams win, they will be far enough from UNCG, Wofford, and VMI to clinch second and third respectively.
What interests us are the scenarios where at least one of the two loses. To start off relatively simple, if Furman loses and Samford wins, Samford's superior record against Chattanooga (2-0 to 0-2) would land them the second seed, while Furman would be third. (The Paladins have already clinched a top-three seed, so this would settle the order of the top three regardless of other results). But considering Furman is facing the second-to-last team in the conference and Samford is facing the first, that particular scenario is very unlikely.
Setting Furman aside, the most complex situation for Samford is the possibility that if they lose, they would be within striking distance of any of the three teams currently sitting at 9-8. What particularly complicates matters is that in the head-to-head table, every team that could be involved in these tiebreakers is 1-1 against every other. This means we're back to the tiebreaker by record against other teams in the conference, descending from the top with Chattanooga. The good news is that every scenario leads to this tiebreaker, which means we can break them all at once.
Poor, longsuffering Wofford continues to be punished for struggling with the heavyweights of the conference, as they're the only one of the four that didn't pick up a win against the Mocs. Thus, we can simplify their scenarios to the result of their own game against Mercer: with a loss they'll finish seventh no matter what, while a win means they'll be ahead of Mercer, ahead of VMI if they lose, ahead of UNCG if they lose, and behind everybody else.
Because we're assuming Samford loses, the next tiebreaker is record against Furman, but every team is 1-1 against them. Now things get complicated again, because we're looking at numerous different tiebreaking scenarios, and whichever teams are not in the tie (i.e. those from the 9-8 group that lose) are critical to determine what happens to the teams that are in the tie.
If UNCG and VMI both win, we're looking at a three-way tie between Samford, UNCG, and VMI. On the upside, we don't need to know whether the record-against-Wofford tiebreaker or the record-against Mercer tiebreaker comes first; as we've established everyone is 1-1 against Wofford, so that changes nothing and we proceed to record against Mercer regardless. Finally, something happens here: UNCG is 0-2 against Mercer and the other are 1-1, so they get knocked out. The bad news is that in this scenario, Samford and VMI would've gotten to their 10-8 records with exactly the same pair of results against every other SoCon team. So where does that leave us? NET rankings, of course! The last resort in this situation is whichever team ends up higher in the NCAA's NET. Currently, Samford is 169th, while VMI is 146th, and while it's not guaranteed, a Samford loss and a VMI win (as in this scenario) would almost certainly give the Keydets the three seed. The #3-through-#5 standings would then be VMI, Samford, UNCG.
If UNCG wins and VMI loses, Samford and UNCG end up in a two-way tiebreaker, which Samford wins because of the aforementioned UNCG record against Mercer. The standings end up as Samford, UNCG, VMI.
If UNCG loses and VMI wins, we once again go to NET to break the Samford-VMI tie, which gives us the same rankings as in that scenario: VMI, Samford, UNCG.
If UNCG and VMI both lose, Samford should thank their lucky stars that they still get to end up at the front in this order: Samford, VMI, UNCG.
Got all that? Well, that pretty much summarises what we know about the rankings going into the final weekend of the regular season. One last thing in regard to ETSU and The Citadel, who will be the 8-vs-9 game: home court in that match (while largely irrelevant) is yet to be decided, because the two are tied. Obviously, if one wins and the other loses, the winner gets the 8 seed; if both win, they have the same record against Chattanooga, Furman, and Samford, and either could end up with the home court depending on who lands in fourth (or third). But if both lose, ETSU's 1-1 record against Furman would outdo The Citadel's 0-2, and they'd land the 8 seed on the tiebreaker.
That's just about everything! It should be a pretty wild final set of games, and almost everybody has something to play for. Tomorrow morning, I'll send out a preview of the weekend's games ahead of the action.