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.