The men’s Southern Conference basketball tournament kicks off Friday, March 6, in Asheville.
“The tournament is one of the most unique experiences that WCU has all year,” said Kyle Rush, the radio voice for the Lady Catamount basketball team, over text message.”
The biggest question surrounding the tournament is can last year’s winner and this year’s number one seed, Wofford repeat as champion? The Terriers had a tremendous season compiling a 25-6 overall record with a 16-2 mark in conference on their way to the top seed in this year’s tournament.
Western’s play throughout the season has been quite the roller coaster. At times the team has clicked very well with each other both on the offensive and defensive ends. In other instances however, the Catamounts would work their way to a large lead, only to fall late in games due to turnovers and missed opportunities.
That up and down tendency has gathered the Cats a 14-16 record with a 9-9 tally in conference, which puts them as the number four seed.
The tournament begins on Friday but with the four seed the Catamounts get a bye into the second round and will not play their first game until Saturday at 2:30 p.m. Their first game will put them up against the number five seed, East Tennessee State University.
Although WCU is a higher seed than ETSU, they have lost both their games against the Buccaneers this season and that will make for a very tough first game for the Cats.
If the Catamounts win and the Terriers advance then we could see a rematch of last year’s championship round in the third round of this years tournament.
WCU battles Wofford in the 2014 SOCON Tournament Photo Courtesy of Asheville Citizen Times
Rush says that some of the best basketball games he has ever seen were in the tournament and some of his best basketball memories were from the battles of WCU and Davidson in the SOCON tournament. Let’s hope he will have some more good memories from this year!
There are a lot of storylines surrounding this year’s tournament and the Catamounts are in the mix of many of them. Can the Catamounts pull out another historic run in the tournament? The only way to find out is to tune in!
The Friday through Sunday games will be broadcast on ESPN3, while the Monday championship round will be broadcast on ESPN2.
