Wednesday, March 6, 2019

SoCon

The Southern Conference begins tournament play on Friday from gorgeous Asheville, NC. The SoCon has 4 KenPom top 100 teams and is his 11th best conference, ahead of the A-10. This could be a fun tournament.

The bellwether is Wofford. The Terriers ripped through the league undefeated, winning 13 of 18 games by double digits. It’s not Gonzaga impressive, but still pretty impressive. They finished 26-4 overall, with all 4 losses happening to KenPom top 100 teams. They’re 20th overall. This is a tournament team, win or lose this tournament. There should be riots if they don’t get an at-large bid if they do lose. Riots.

UNC-Greensboro finished 2nd at 15-3 and are 84th in KenPom, making them probably the 4th best team in the league. Wofford beat them by 29 at UNCG and by 30 at home. Yeah, UNCG finished the year 26-5 and they’re the 4th best team in the league IMO.

Furman and East Tennessee State finished the year 13-5 in league play. Furman snuck into the top 25 for a brief spell before back-to-back losses to LSU and ETSU. The Paladins finished 24-6 overall and 52nd in KenPom. They kept it in single digits against the Terriers and have only one weird home loss to Samford. Really, I’d rather have them in the tournament than say, a lot of majors middle of the pack trash bags.

East Tennessee State is 65th in KenPom and took Wofford to overtime at home. They finished 23-8 overall and mark this down, will be a top 35 team in the nation next year.

The Pick: Furman - They’ve won 8 of 9 and the 4 losses they have since January 1st are by a total of 25 points, with one being a 10-point loss to UNCG. They played Wofford tough and I’m going with the whole “tough to beat a team 3 times” mumbo jumbo. Also, this league deserves two bids

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