I’m using my ratings and Bill James’ log5 formula to estimate the chances of each participating team advancing to a particular round of its conference tournament.
Southern Conference
Location: Asheville, N.C. (U.S. Cellular Center)
Dates: March 7-10
Chance of bid thief: zero
Current kPOY: De’Mon Brooks, Davidson
Projections:
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 Davidson 100 89.4 63.1 47.0 3 Wofford 100 78.7 53.0 21.3 4 Elon 100 59.9 22.6 13.4 2 Chattanooga 100 66.8 28.9 8.4 5 W. Carolina 100 40.1 11.9 5.9 7 Ga. Southern 67.5 25.7 8.4 1.7 6 UNC Greensboro 72.4 18.2 7.6 1.5 8 Samford 58.0 6.9 1.7 0.5 9 Appalachian St 42.0 3.7 0.7 0.2 10 Furman 32.5 7.4 1.5 0.2 11 The Citadel 27.6 3.1 0.7 0.06
Davidson’s De’Mon Brooks has had a stellar four-year career. He’s been an efficient, high-usage scorer from the get-go and a solid rebounder on both ends of the floor. This season, he added the ability to call his own fouls, of which he does often: approximately 8.1 times per 40 minutes. That trait should come in handy in Asheville.
The Wildcats provided another good example of how confidence derived from scheduling seems to largely be a myth. They went 4-10 in non-conference play, partly due to games against the likes of Duke, Virginia, and Wichita State, and entered the conference schedule on a five-game losing streak. They proceeded to win 15 of 16 conference games, leading the conference in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Just one of those wins was by single-digits and the loss was by two in overtime. In a normal season, this would have been the most dominant performance by a team relative to its league.
Davidson’s only conference loss was to Elon, who was voted the preseason pick to win the league by the SoCon’s head coaches. I think this was in the same way that Charles Barkley was voted MVP in 1993. People were tired of Davidson winning the conference even though they still figured to be the best team. Elon didn’t do poorly, mind you. But an 11-5 record looks disappointing in comparison to the 13-5 record they had two seasons ago.