Southern Conference
March 4-7. All games at Asheville.
kPOY: Stephen Croone, Furman.

The SoCon gets underway on Friday with two first-round games in Asheville.

The Southern Conference ranked as the 20th-best in the country, which was its best ranking since 2011 when the league was home to Charleston and Davidson. Chattanooga won the league by a game over East Tennessee State and lost five games all season. The Mocs got road wins over Dayton, Georgia, and Illinois along the way. But the conference has a total of seven teams ranked in the top 200 (compared to just three last season) so a tournament title will be well-earned, and in fact the field is the smart pick here.

The defending champ is Wofford who went 11-7, but the Terriers most impressive achievement was hitting 44% of their three-point attempts in conference play, a figure bested only by Michigan State across the country. This was boosted by one of the best single-game performances on record, a 17-for-21 effort in a 92-60 drubbing of VMI.

There’s a lot of balance in the following table. Seven teams have at least a 7% of winning the title.

                       Qtrs Semis Final Champ
 1 Chattanooga          100  80.2  56.8  38.3
 2 East Tennessee St.   100  61.2  34.7  16.1
 3 Furman               100  55.1  27.0  11.3
 4 Wofford              100  52.1  19.0   9.0
 5 Western Carolina     100  47.9  16.6   7.6
 6 UNC Greensboro       100  44.9  19.6   7.4
 7 Mercer              79.0  35.0  17.9   7.3
 9 Samford             68.9  16.1   6.8   2.6
 8 VMI                 31.1   3.7   0.9   0.2
10 The Citadel         21.0   3.7   0.9   0.2

SoCon tourney records (since 1999)

East Tennessee St. 9- 6
Wofford           17-13
Chattanooga       18-15
Mercer             1- 1
Furman            15-17
UNC Greensboro    14-16
Western Carolina  13-17
Samford            3- 7
VMI                2- 6
The Citadel        4-17