The college basketball season is over and we are into March Madness season.
WCU Catamounts first game in the SOCON tournament is March 4 at 2:30 p.m. at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville against the 5th seeded East Tennessee State University.
Coming into the season the Western Carolina university men’s basketball team was projected to finish 8 out of 10 in the Southern conference standings.
Coach Justin Gray in just his second year of being the head coach for the Catamounts was able to exceed these expectations with an impressive 17 wins and 14 losses and a 10-8 conference record resulting in a 4th place finish.
The Cats had a completely new look in 2023 with 12 new players being added to the roster that were not on it the year before.
Of those 12 new players the two biggest highlights were Tyzhaun Claude, a redshirt Junior forward transfer from Morehead State, and Tre Jackson, Senior Guard transfer from Iowa State.
Claude averaged 15.4 points a game for the Catamounts and on top of that led the team with 8.6 rebounds a game.
Meanwhile Jackson was the catamounts leading scorer averaging 15.9 points a game and even had a 47-point performance against the Wofford Terroirs Feb. 8.
Although these two stood out, they did not do it alone as the cats had 7 players averaging more than 5 points per game in the 2023 season.
With the regular season coming to an end the Cats are the 4 seed heading into the Southern Conference tournament.
“Anything happens in March, we want our guys to understand every game is different but the most important one is the one that is in front of you and we will be ready to go,” said head coach Justin Gray.
Western Carolina is looking to win its first southern conference championship tournament since 1996.
To check out the full bracket click here.
