Who is going to claim the auto bid out of the Socon?

Samford is far and away the favorite to claim the automatic bid from the southern conference. They sit atop the league with a 23-4 record overall and a 12-2 record in conference play. This puts Samford 3 games ahead of the next best team in the conference. Samford is led by their 47th ranked offense and their breakneck tempo which ranks 12th in the nation. Their pace leads to a lot of good as Samford’s offense is one of the most efficient in the nation with the 4th highest 3pt percentage in the nation and the 12th highest percentage inside the arc. A lot of those open looks come from the fast break, but their pace also leads to a high turnover rate at 18%. It’s going to be very important in the tournament if Samford can win the turnover battle that will be very telling. Maybe the most fascinating part about Samford in their defense which is ranked at a very respectable 121st in the country. They run a 3-quarter court press for most of the game and also employ a zone. Which leads them to have one of the better forced turnover rates in the nation at 22%. Once you get past the press and into the halfcourt their zone is not perfect. It has its holes that can be exploited with a team that shares the ball well, but it is a look that is not often seen and could give a team in the tournament issues. One reason that Samford can afford to keep up the defensive pressure with their press is because they are one of the deepest teams in college basketball. They regularly go to 11 or 12 players throughout the game this leads to extreme balance across their roster. Samford has no one player averaging over 25 mpg or being the go-to guy on offense. This makes hardest thing to stop about Samford lethal offense is how many guys can put the ball on the floor and hurt you. They have 4 guys averaging above 10 points and 4 more guys averaging above 5 points. They are a very balanced team and if they were able to get the automatic bid Samford could be a hard first out for a top seed. Bracket matrix shows that most bracketologists have Samford at a 12 or 13 seed. Every 4 and 5 seed should be concerned about the bulldogs. The best matchup for Samford would be a team that struggles with pressure. Some teams that could struggle with pressure in the 4-5 range right now would be Creighton, Dayton, or Clemson. All good teams but because none of them force turnovers at a high rate if they struggle at all with the pressure the turnover margin could get ugly leading to an upset.  

Chatanooga and UNC Greensborough are currently tied for second in the Southern Conference with a conference record of 11-5 and are the other contenders to claim the automatic bid. Chatanooga is a team that goes as far as their backcourt can take them. The 2 featured guards on the team Huff and Bonham are both averaging around 17 points per game. They have led Chatanooga to the 89th ranked offense in the country. However, the problems lie on defense where they are ranked 205th in college basketball. One of the only positives for Chatanooga’s defense is Sam Alexis positive who is averaging over 2 blocks a game right now. His defense couldn’t help Chatanooga when they faced Samford and they lost both of those games by 15 or more points. I would be very shocked if Chatanooga could come away with the automatic bid in the conference tournament. The other contender is UNC Greensborough who is one of the best 3pt shooting teams in the nation with the 9th best percentage and 40% of their points coming from beyond the 3pt line. That’s what makes UNC Greensborough a contender in this league, but they aren’t really great at much else they are very inefficient inside the 3pt arc, they don’t get to the free throw line or keep their opponent from the line, they don’t force turnovers, or rebound particularly well. They are not a very good overall team but if they get hot from the 3pt line they could be a scary team. I think it is very unlikely that either of these teams will claim the automatic bid. If Chatanooga, does they have an exceptionally low chance of advancing but if it is UNC Greensborough they still have a low chance; if they get hot from three, they could upset a team. 

The other title hopefuls in the Southern Conference include Furman, Wofford, and Western Carolina. All these teams sit with a conference record between 10-6 and 8-8, rankings on KenPom between 131 and 189. It would be a huge surprise if any of them could knock off Samford from their thrown. If it were going to be any of these teams it would be one of Cinderella stories from last year in Furman. They handed Samford one of their 2 conference losses this season by 10 points no less. If you see any of these teams on selection Sunday, it should be an easy advance for any of the favored seeds.