The SoCon Lowdown: With two tickets punched, how will the SoCon's postseason plans play out?
March 9, 2022
With Chattanooga securing the SoCon's autobid to the NCAA tournament—and nobody else having a realistic shot to make the field—postseason plans for the conference's other nine teams are starting to trickle in. Alongside the Mocs, two teams have already declared their intentions, and several others have good odds of making one of the four brackets (NCAAT, NIT, CBI, or CIT). So where are the SoCon's representatives likely to end up this year?
Chattanooga (27-7, 14-4)
The Mocs punched their first NCAA tournament bid since 2016 on David Jean-Baptiste's buzzer-beating three in the SoCon championship game. Now, the only question is where they'll be seeded. The consensus, for now, seems to be that Chattanooga is a high 13 seed, but several surprising autobids (including Wright State, Georgia State, Jacksonville State, and Delaware) have bumped them up to consideration for a 12 seed. At present, judging by Bracket Matrix, they're projected for an average seed of around 12.89, which is the highest of the teams on the 13 line but significantly behind the team directly above them, Summit League champ South Dakota State. If there's a path to moving up that critical last spot, it probably lies in the possibility of C-USA favourite North Texas missing out on their autobid.
Furman (22-12, 12-6)
The Paladins are comfortably the best team in the SoCon that hasn't yet indicated their postseason plans. On paper, they seem like a fringe NIT/CBI team, but it's worth noting that as we move down the list, the odds of these teams declining invitations will rise, primarily because the non-NCAAT events are pay-to-play tournaments. The bad news for Furman is that, while they were easily on the NIT bubble after the SoCon championship game, the tournament offers autobids to regular-season champs that don't win their conference tournaments, and Tuesday's action produced several of those, bumping the Paladins down a few places. If Furman's best postseason ticket ends up as a CBI bid, just a week after it looked like they could snap a 42-year NCAAT drought, there's a solid chance they would turn down the offer—although they might take any offer to give a senior-heavy lineup a proper sendoff.
Samford (21-11, 10-8)
The Bulldogs have already declared their intentions to skip the postseason, despite reportedly receiving offers from multiple tournaments. At full strength, Samford would be a fun and formidable team to watch claw its way through the NIT or CBI, but they are evidently not at that level currently. Per their official release, the team is withdrawing primarily due to injuries and scheduled surgeries—which most evidently applies to team star Ques Glover, pulled from Samford's semifinal loss late after incidental contact left him with a bloody nose. The only seniors on the Bulldogs' roster are Jacob Tryon (who played 43.5% of minutes) and Richardson Maitre (17.9%), and most of the starting lineup consists of sophomores, so they'll have ample opportunity to reach the postseason in the future.
Wofford (19-13, 10-8)
Here's where things start to get particularly murky. Furman is pretty clearly on the outside looking in for the NIT, though they could still sneak into the field. Meanwhile, VMI, which went 16-15 and 9-9 in the SoCon, has already announced their participation in the CBI. So where does that leave Wofford, which finished well behind Furman but beat Wofford in the SoCon tournament? The NIT looked like a long shot at best after their blowout loss in the semis, and the chaos of Tuesday dashed any remaining hopes of finding a spot there. The CBI would make a certain amount of sense, but you'd figure if they were going to reach out to SoCon teams, they would've certainly gone for Wofford before VMI. If that's the case, it seems likely the Terriers turned down the invitation and decided to skip the postseason. With Ryan Larson the only major senior on the team, it would make sense, more or less.
VMI (16-15, 9-9)
As mentioned, the Keydets were the first team in the conference to announce their postseason destination, as they'll slot into the 16-team field playing in Daytona Beach in a week and a half. If you're going to pluck a team out of this conference aside from the top three, VMI makes a lot of sense as a pick: they had a first-teamer, two third-teamers, and an all-freshman first-teamer in the all-conference selections, and their best player is a senior who was in the SoCon Player of the Year running right down to the wire. The season-ending 1-5 skid was rather underwhelming, but VMI evidently has upside that makes them an interesting postseason contender in the third-tier tournament.
UNC-Greensboro (17-14, 9-9)
On the other hand, if it's mystifying that the CBI would go to VMI over Wofford, it's also a bit odd that they wouldn't call up UNCG as well. The Spartans are pretty much everything the Keydets are: they had star power, a team-leading senior in De'Monte Buckingham, and they finished the season pretty decently, nearly upsetting a good Samford team in the conference tournament. So why have they been snubbed—thus far, at least? In all likelihood, VMI's presence on the all-conference teams is what got them over the hump. UNCG, by contrast, was the only team with no representatives for SoCon honours. It'd be a shame if the career of Buckingham, whose played for three teams across four conferences, ends without a postseason bid, so I'd love to see them at least sneak into the CIT.
Mercer (16-17, 8-10)
East Tennessee State (15-17, 7-11)
The Citadel (13-18, 6-12)
Western Carolina (11-21, 5-13)
For these four teams, it's difficult to see any postseason tournaments come knocking. Mercer's senior-led lineup and briefly-glimpsed upside, or The Citadel's playoff performance and dynamic duo of Hayden Brown and Jason Roche, could intrigue the CIT, but none of the bottom four have the complete package that they'd likely need to receive a bid. For stars like Felipe Haase, Jalen Johnson, David Sloan, Hayden Brown, Tyler Moffe, David Maynard, Nick Robinson, and Cam Bacote, this is likely the end of the road.
Before I sign off for the next few days to watch chaos unfold around the rest of college basketball, I'll leave you with this: David Jean-Baptiste's interview with Andy Katz from the day after he hit the game-winner in his final SoCon game. It's a great opportunity to see the thought process of one of the conference's best and smartest players:
“You dream of those shots as a kid. It was a surreal shot.” 👏 @GoMocsMBB's David Jean-Baptiste broke down the clinching buzzer-beater with @TheAndyKatz! #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/c0nfcix7Cj
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 8, 2022