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