The SoCon Lowdown: Winning in the clutch
Plus: Wofford battles back and Western Carolina continues to struggle
There’s a bit of a boy-who-cried-wolf problem with discussing close games in college basketball. Pretty much anybody who covers a particular conference or team has a certain obligation to convince their viewers and/or readers that it’s worth watching and/or reading more about them, because the results are always unpredictable. Otherwise-reasonable people will go to some pretty silly lengths to make this claim—even in the SoCon, where it genuinely does seem impossible to exaggerate the league’s parity, it happens. I’ve heard multiple announcers state that every game in this conference is unpredictable, specifically with reference to VMI, which has been in the bottom ten of Torvik for the entire year and lost to the league’s most consistent contenders by 38 (Samford) and 25 (WCU).
Setting the Keydets aside, though, there are a ton of tough games in this conference, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the final standings and the tournament results will rely heavily on close-game performance. I still believe Western Carolina is one of the best teams in this conference, at least on paper, but losing five of six games by a combined 18 points reveals a lot about how they play in the clutch. Is that meaningful, and will it changes when we get to Asheville, for the Catamounts and for other teams? Hard to say for sure, but it probably matters more than simple metrics will reveal.
Any view of the SoCon standings, whether predicated on pure résumé or on metrics, has had Samford comfortably in first for weeks. We get regular reminders of how clutch the Bulldogs are—like their down-to-the-wire win over Wofford early in the week, when the Terriers tied it with 19 seconds left, only for Achor Achor to go in the paint and hit a game-winning layup with a second and a half on the clock. Those tight finishes aren’t frequent enough to hurt Samford’s numbers too much, though, especially when paired with games like their last—a 78-56 blowout in Chattanooga that snapped the Mocs’ five-game winning streak in emphatic fashion. The Bulldogs now have their eighth 20-win season ever; they’re likely just a couple weeks from reaching the program record of 24.
UNC Greensboro isn’t a team I would expect to be leading the way in clutch play, yet here the Spartans are, second in the SoCon and looking like it in nearly every close finish. This team is almost unrecognizable from the lackluster big-game performances it put up last year, and after a season-defining win over WCU a few weeks ago, UNCG got another against Furman on Sunday. Keyshaun Langley scored a career-high 30 points in the win, and the Spartans weathered game-tying back-to-back threes from JP Pegues, going ahead with just under a minute left and holding the Paladins scoreless down the stretch. That’s two wins that say this team is definitively different; is it enough for us to bet on them in their biggest test yet, a home rematch with Samford on Thursday? The metrics say it might very well be (they’re +0.7 in Torvik), and for once, the eye test agrees.
Chattanooga seems to win whenever they have even a ghost of a chance, which has made for a very entertaining season, if nothing else. Each of their losses to the current top two have been duds—they fell to UNCG by 16 and Samford by 15 and 22—but they’ve been perfect elsewhere, including this week’s huge road win over Western Carolina, in which they weathered a remarkable 36-point performance from Vonterius Woolbright. They probably don’t have the high ceiling or depth required to win the conference tournament, but memories of last year’s deep run are still fresh, and this team feels like it could give most of the league fits in a must-win scenario.
Furman is an odd case in judging teams by their clutch performances. Overall, they seem like a pretty good baseline: they’ve had close wins (65-62 over WCU, 82-79 over The Citadel) and a close loss (89-87 to UNCG), which is about what you’d expect for an upper-half team. JP Pegues, though, seems to define the Paladins’ stretch runs to a ridiculous extent. He’s picked up right where he left off with the game-winning three over Virginia in the 2023 tournament, as he knocked down another game-winning three against the Catamounts, an OT-forcing three against the Bulldogs, and those aforementioned back-to-back threes against the Spartans. There is, without a doubt, nobody in the league you want to see less in a close game.
After Wofford started 4-1 with wins over the SoCon’s bottom four, the other shoe naturally dropped as they posted back-to-back game scores of 6 in decisive losses to UNCG and Chattanooga. And then they, uh, picked the shoe up again? In their last three games, the Terriers have pulled off home upsets of Furman and Western Carolina, and they’ve taken Samford down to the last shot in Pete Hanna Center—something that hadn’t been done by any team, all season, until then. Wofford has earned every bit of their 6-4 record at this point, and they honestly might be one of the best bets to snag the league’s autobid.
It makes sense, on paper, that Western Carolina would struggle in close games, particularly when they need to play from behind. Sure, Russell Jones Jr. and DJ Campbell are good three-point options, but this offense runs through Vonterius Woolbright, a player who averages eleven days between made threes. It’s good, but it’s going to suffer when it needs to play catch-up. This much, though? The Catamounts are now on a 1-5 skid without a loss by more than six in that span, and despite not really having a bad game at any point, this stretch has raised some serious questions about whether they can stay out of trouble and avoid needing a comeback in the conference tournament. It’s also, quite simply, put them in a pretty deep hole when it comes to seeding; I don’t think they’ll fall to the play-in, but it’s stunning that they’re just a game out of it at the moment after starting the season 15-2.
If there’s any team that has a shot at escaping the bottom four, whether at the cost of WCU or some other late-collapsing contender, it’s ETSU. The Buccaneers defeated both Mercer and The Citadel this week, sweeping the other three bottom-feeders on their first meetings (though, it’s worth noting, by a total of just eight points). Still, close wins count the same as any others, and they’re now within striking distance of the top six. This week is fascinating and critical for the Bucs, as they face Wofford and Furman in Johnson City—both game in which Torvik favors them, remarkably enough. It’d be quite a feat if Brooks Savage can take advantage of those and other opportunities down the stretch and get this team a trip straight to the quarterfinals, given the program’s recent struggles.
Mercer is still Mercer. After a shocking win over UNCG that might just have saved Greg Gary’s job, the Bears went home and immediately got knocked around by East Tennessee State, scoring a season-low 49 points in the process. By any reasonable logic, of course, one Q2 win shouldn’t be worth a dismal five losses in Q4 or worse (don’t forget, they lost their opener to D2 Clark Atlanta). In a competitive conference like the SoCon, it really wouldn’t take a lot for the Bears to just not be mediocre anymore. But it’s Mercer, so…jury’s still out on whether Gary faces any consequences for this season. I know I say it every week, but I really would love to see some evidence that this athletic department is willing to care about basketball. Please?
Getting back on the topic of close games, they’ve really stung for The Citadel this season, arguably even more than for Western Carolina. Going into conference play with a dominant defensive win over Notre Dame, this really looked like a team that would be fighting for a seed in the middle of the pack, maybe even punching up at Samford and WCU in the regular-season title fight. Now, partly due to four losses by six points or fewer, they’re 1-9 in the SoCon. Two of those close defeats came this week—a 15-point blown lead against rival Furman, then a 15-point comeback against ETSU that fell just short—and they all but sealed the Bulldogs’ fate as a play-in team. Expectations weren’t too high in what was always a rebuilding season, but it’s hard to argue this isn’t a disappointment on some level.
VMI is still very bad. The Keydets had a rather odd game this week against UNC Greensboro, going down 26-7 and trailing by double digits for over 30 minutes before making a late charge, getting as close as a five-point deficit before falling 85-79. It was never quite close enough that it really felt like UNCG would lose—especially given that, well, this is VMI—but it was at least more notable than the blowout losses they’ve been taking regularly in conference play. Of course, just to remind us that they are who we thought they were, the Keydets then took a 21-point loss to that lifeless Mercer team.
On Monday, the Southern Conference released its 2024 football schedule, opening on September 14 with a marquee game between reigning playoff participants Mercer and Chattanooga. In softball, UNC Greensboro was named the favorite to win the league in the preseason coaches poll, while Furman infielder Kiley Perry and Mercer sophomore Grace Taylor earned preseason player and pitcher of the year honors, respectively. Seven schools—East Tennessee State, Furman, Mercer, Samford, Chattanooga, UNC Greensboro, and Wofford—saw their men’s and women’s programs named NCAA D1 cross country all-academic teams, recording an average GPA over 3.0.