Furman to face High Point in Field of 68 Opening Day Marathon

You know you're getting close to the start of all things college basketball when parts of the schedule begin to be announced. 

Furman, which is coming off a 25-win season and NIT appearance in 2024-25, will open the 2025-26 season on Nov. 3 against 2024-25 Big South Champion and NCAA Tournament participant High Point it was announced earlier this week by the "Field of 68", which has become college basketball's most comprehensive and informative podcast, with some of the best analysts that cover the sport, including but not limited to: Jeff Goodman, John Fanta, Terrence Ogelsby and Rob Dauster to name a few. 

Three years ago, the Field of 68 offered its first live broadcast live on X, as John Fanta and Rob Dauster were on location at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena to broadcast Furman's thrilling 72-70 win over Stephen F. Austin, as Mike Bothwell's baseline jumper with less than a second left, allowing the Paladins to post a 72-70 win over the Lumberjacks. 

The Paladins will face off against a High Point team in the 6:30 p.m. contest at the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center in Rock Hill, S.C., and will be part of a slate that includes six games in two different venues. In Rock Hill, the day will get started with Winthrop facing off against Queens in an 8 AM clash, which will also have plenty of local appeal. That will be followed by an 11 AM clash between St. Bonaventure and Bradley.  

Like Furman, both the Bonnies and Braves were part of the NIT last season and both are coming off 20-win seasons. The Braves would be knocked out of the NIT by eventual champion and Southern Conference member Chattanooga, 67-65, in the NIT quarterfinals. St. Bonaventure won 22 games last season, while Bradley finished with 28 victories on the season. 

Murray State and 2025 NCAA Tournament qualifier and Summit league champion will kick off the games in the Sioux Falls venue at the Pentagon in a 1:30 p.m. contest, which will be followed by reigning Missouri Valley champion Drake, which won 31 games last season, facing off against Big Sky member Northern Arizona, which finished 18-16 last season. That game will tip at 4 p.m. EST. 

Furman will then face off against the High Point Panthers in a 6:30 contest at Rock Hill Sports and Events Center in a 6:30 p.m. contest, which will close out the games for the day in Rock Hill. The final game of the day will see South Dakota State and Merrimack facing off against one another at the Pentagon. Merrimack finished 18-15 overall last season, which included a 14-6 mark in the America East Conference, which was good enough for a second-place finish. The Jackrabbits won 20 games last season and finished third in the Summit League last season.

More on Furman-High Point...

The Paladins and Panthers will be facing off against each other on the hardwood for the first time since Dec. 6, 2022, as the two will represent the nightcap of the opening day event at the Rock Hill Sports and Events Center. 

The Paladins welcome the return of five players, who have starting experience, while High Point is coming off a 2024-25 season, which saw it post a 29-6 record and a first-ever Big South title and trip to the NCAA Tournament, where the Panthers dropped a 75-63 contest to No. 4 Purdue in Providence, RI. 

The Panthers will have a new head coach leading the way when they take the floor to open the 2025-26 campaign against the Paladins, as Flynn Clayman succeeds Alan Huss, who left his role as the head coach of the Panthers to become the coach-in-waiting at Creighton whenever Doug McDermott calls it a career. During his two years leading the High Point basketball program, Huss established himself as one of the top coaches at the mid-major level of hoops, leading High Point to an impressive 56-15 record over a two-year span before moving on. 

Clayman was Huss' top assistant during his time at High Point and was part of both teams that helped win nearly 60 games over the past couple of seasons. He inherits a team that still has some veterans around that helped lead the Panthers so that NCAA Tournament success last season, and the Panthers will likely find themselves as a team picked to be in the mix for a Big South title on the hardwood once again in the 2025-26 season. 

Swingman Terry Anderson and shooting guard Chase Johnson are the two main veterans returning to the fold for the Panthers heading into upcoming season. Johnson is one of the better shooters on the team, and he comes off a season, which saw him start 34 of 35 games for the Panthers, averaging 6.9 PPG, 1.8 RPG and 1.0 APG last season. Johnson blistered the nets to the tune of 42.5% last season, connecting on 71-of-167 shots from long range.  He posted 213 of his 241 points from three-point range last season, and his 71 threes led the Panthers for the season, averaging 4.8 made threes per game. 

Terry Anderson is a 6-6 swingman that comes off a 2024-25 season that saw him appear in 26 games in his first season with the Panthers after transferring in from Lamar prior to the 2024-25 season, averaging 4.5 PPG and 2.8 RPG in those 26 games he logged action in a year ago. 

Much of the roster that saw the Panthers break through and punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament last season has moved on, either via the transfer portal or due to being out of eligibility all together. 

The season-opening clash will mark the fifth all-time meeting between the two, with Furman owning the 3-1 series edge. The last time the two played was Dec. 6, 2022, as the Paladins would drop an 85-82 contest at Timmons Arena. It was one of just eight losses the Paladins would suffer the entire season, as Furman won a school-record 28 games, including an NCAA Tournament win over Virginia (W, 68-67) after returning to the Big Dance after a 43-year hiatus. 

Ranking the SoCon's Head Basketball Coaches

 In the off-season, it's always fun to come up with content and different rankings. For the past few years, I have been meaning to write this article but have never gotten around to it. Now is the time, however, and it's time to rank the SoCon's 10 basketball coaches. 

The list is based a little on longevity in the league but also based some on success or lack thereof at previous stops in their respective careers. I have argued more than once that the SoCon has been a hotbed for developing young coaching talent to make the jump to the power conference level. I put a big emphasis on NCAA Tournaments that a current coach has led either his current team to, or the one he coached previously. 

During the off-season, the SoCon had just one coaching change, with Bucky McMillan having moved on to Texas A&M to become the head coach of the Aggies. He becomes the latest of the league's head coaches to make the jump to the power six level of college basketball. Below is a list of the coaches that have left for the power six conferences over the past decade.

Before we rank the current 1-10 coaches in the SoCon, let's take a look back at the coaches that are now coaching at the power six level, starting with the 2013-14 season. The 2025-26 season of basketball will mark the 106th season of college basketball in the SoCon.

Recant Coaches Who Have Made The Jump

Will Wade (Chattanooga, 2013-15)--With mentors such as former Clemson head coach Larry Shyatt and current Marquette boss Shaka Smart, the controversial head coach took over the Chattanooga basketball program following the resignation of John Shulman following the 2012-13 season. He left VCU where he was a top assistant at VCU under Smart to take over the suddenly struggling Mocs basketball program and the 2013-14 season would see Chattanooga turn things around in a major way, finishing with an 18-15 record and a 12-4 ledger in Southern Conference play--good enough to see the Mocs finish second overall in the SoCon standings that season and see the Mocs qualify for the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT), losing to bitter rival and then Atlantic Sun member East Tennessee State, 79-66, in the opening round in Johnson City. Wade would be named Southern Conference Coach of the Year in 2013-14. In his final season at Chattanooga in 2014-15, he would lead the Mocs to 22 wins, which included a 15-3 mark in regular-season SoCon action, which was good enough for a second-place finish in the regular-season, with only Wofford finishing with a better record. After No. 10 seed Furman upset Wade's Mocs in the quarterfinals of the SoCon Tournament, it brought an abrupt end to what had been a successful campaign. In two seasons at UTC, Wade posted a 40-25 mark in two seasons. Shortly thereafter, Wade would accept the head coaching job at VCU where spent two seasons before getting his first big power six job at LSU in 2017. Wade was recently named as the new head coach at North Carolina State in late March of 2025. 

Niko Medved  (Furman, 2012-17)--Took Minnesota job in the off-season; Left Furman for Drake during the Paladins' 2017 postseason run in the CIT; He then left following one year at Drake and then spent seven seasons at the helm of the Colorado State, leading the Rams to the Sweet Sixteen this past March before taking the job at his alma mater Minnesota just 48 hours after the Rams heartbreaking loss in the NCAA Tournament to Maryland at the buzzer. Medved started his propensity for turning around Furman during his time as the Paladins' head coach, taking over a Furman basketball program that won just six games in the season prior to him taking the reins. In Medved's first season at Furman, the Paladins won just nine games, finishing off the season with a 9-20 record. It wouldn't be until the tail end of the 2014-15 season that Medved would really start to turn the Paladin basketball program into being a perennial power in the Southern Conference, as he would lead Furman all the way to the SoCon title game as the No. 10 seed, as the Paladins came close to becoming the biggest upset story in league history before losing to top seeded Wofford, 67-64, in the 2015 championship game. Medved would lead Furman to 19 and 23-win seasons over the next two campaigns, which included a shared SoCon title in the 2016-17, as ETSU, UNCG and Furman all shared the regular-season SoCon crown. Medved was responsible for helping the Paladins to back-to-back CIT bids--the program's first postseason appearance since 2010--and the win over Louisiana Monroe in the 2016 CIT was Furman's first postseason win of any sort since 1974 only the second in program history. He finished with a record of 62-70 over four years, helping re-shape Furman basketball into a perennial SoCon title contender.

Mike Young (Wofford, 2002-19)--Mike Young was one of the "feel-good" stories of the Southern Conference coaching ladder over the past decade. Prior to the remarkable 2018-19 season, Young was the lowest paid coach in the Southern Conference. That's almost unbelievable when you consider what he had done and what he was in the process of doing for the Terriers basketball program over what was a 17-year coaching career in Spartanburg, which saw Young essentially build the Terrier program into a perennial SoCon and mid-major power over a 17-year span, taking the Terrier basketball program from NCAA Division infancy to one that made five of its six NCAA Tournament appearances in a 10-year span under his watchful eye. Young was 5-0 in title games in his career. He finished his career at Wofford with 299-career wins at Wofford, finishing with an impressive 299-244 record over 18 seasons as the head coach of the Terriers. His crowning achievement as the Terriers' head coach was leading Wofford to 30 wins, national ranking and Southern Conference regular-season and tournament titles during the 2018-19 season. The Terriers finished the season with a 30-5 overall record, which included an 18-0 record in regular-season play in what was a league that featured maybe the most strength across its top four in league history.  With players like NCAA record-breaking shooter Fletcher Magee and big man Cameron Jackson, Young helped the Terriers to cruise to an opening round, 84-68, opening round win over Seton Hall. The Terriers would eventually see their magical run end in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, with a 62-55 loss to a Tyler Herro-led Kentucky team. Wofford's opening round win over Seton Hall in the 2019 NCAA Tournament marked the program's first NCAA Tournament win in program history. Shortly after the 2019 NCAA Tournament exit, Young accepted the head coaching position at Virginia Tech where he remains the head coach currently. It ended a 30-year tenure at Wofford as either the assistant coach (1989-2002) or the head coach (2002-19). 

Steve Forbes (ETSU, 2015-2020)--Steve Forbes would end up being the coach that brought East Tennessee State basketball back to the pinnacle of success on the Southern Conference hardwood, as well as being a coach that like Young at Wofford, would end up leading ETSU to its most historic season in program history prior to his departure following the 2019-20 season. Forbes took over an ETSU prior to the 2015-16 season, which was just after the first season for the Bucs back in the Southern Conference after spending nine years in the Atlantic Sun. ETSU's first season back in the SoCon came on the heels of a very mediocre return to the league a year earlier under the direction of Murry Bartow, who led the Bucs to a 16-14 overall mark and an 8-10 record in league play in their first season back in the league in after the near-decade absence. Forbes, who had been serving a two-year show-cause penalty as a head coach at Northwest Florida State, leading the team from Niceville, FL, to a 62-6 record over two seasons at the helm. From there, he would join Gregg Marshall's staff at Wichita State for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons before being hired at ETSU prior to the 2015-16 season. Forbes' impact as the head coach was almost immediate, bringing in a high-profile class in that first season, which included Baylor transfer Deuce Bello and guard  Ge'Lawn Guyn from Cincinnati, as the Bucs won 24 games in Forbes' first season as the head coach and made the SoCon Tournament title game before dropping what was a 73-67 loss to Chattanooga in the title game tilt. The Bucs would garner a postseason invite to the Vegas 16, reaching the semifinals of that tournament. In his second season in Johnson City, he would lead the Bucs to their first of two SoCon titles over a five-year stretch, as the Bucs finished 27-8 overall and 14-4 in the SoCon, sharing the regular-season title with Furman and UNCG, who also posted 14-4 league marks that season. In the 2017 SoCon title game, the Bucs downed league juggernaut UNCG, 79-74, in the championship game. After winning 49 games over the next couple of seasons, the Bucs put together what was a historic run in the 2019-20 season, following up Wofford's 30-win campaign of the 2018-19 season with 30 wins in 2019-20, which included a pre-Christmas win over LSU in Baton Rouge (W, 74-63). The Bucs would complete the SoCon regular-season with a 16-2 mark, with the only league losses that season coming at Furman (L, 55-64) and vs. Mercer (L, 55-71). Unlike Wofford a year earlier, the Bucs reached the 30-win plateau prior to the NCAA Tournament, which was ultimately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as ETSU knocked off Wofford, 72-58, in the title game. Following the 30-4 campaign, the Bucs unfortunately did not get to compete in the NCAA Tournament due to the aforementioned pandemic, however, the consensus is that the Bucs would have likely won one or perhaps two games in the Big Dance. After 130 wins and two SoCon Tournament titles in five years, Forbes followed his dream of coaching power six conference basketball, accepting the head coaching offer from Wake Forest in late April of 2020 where he remains presently. 

Wes Miller  (UNCG, 2011-2021)--Wes Miller was an example of a coach where patience paid off by the UNCG Athletic Administration. Miller, who won a 2005 national title as a player at UNC under Roy Williams, would become a head coach just six years later, as he took over on an interim basis for Mike Dement at UNCG in December of 2011 after the Spartans had gotten off to just a 2-8 start. Under the watchful of eye of the young interim head coach,  the Spartans would post an 11-11 record to finish out the campaign with a 13-19 overall record and a forged a tie for first place atop the North Division in the 2011-12 standings. He was named the 2012 SoCon Coach of the Year in the process. After being hired on as an assistant prior to UNCG's 7-24 season of 2010-11 and leading the Spartans over the latter half of the ensuing season as the interim head coach, Miller shed the interim tag the following season and officially become the head coach at UNCG for the 2012-13 campaign.  Miller wouldn't see success come as immediately as Forbes did at ETSU, or Wade did at Chattanooga. In fact, the first-place finish in 2011-12 as an interim coach would be followed by back-to-back last-place finishes in the North Division before the SoCon transitioned away from divisions prior to the 2014-15 season. UNCG's success would interestingly coincide with ETSU, Furman, Chattanooga and Wofford in the league during that same period. Following a seventh-place finish in 2014-15, Miller started to build UNCG into a perennial SoCon title contender in 2015-16 after a 15-19 season, which saw the program tie for fifth in the league standings with a 10-8 mark, and would garner a CIT bid and reached the quarterfinals of that tournament,  which accounted for UNCG's first non-conference tournament postseason win as an NCAA Division I member. Miller would lead the Spartans to 25 wins and a tie atop the league for a regular-season title in 2016-17, as the Spartans shared the title with both Furman (14-4) and ETSU (14-4) that season, but tiebreakers would see UNCG head to Asheville as the SoCon's top overall seed. UNCG would eventually lose in the tournament title game, 79-74, to ETSU in the 2017 title game but got revenge a year later, as the Spartans downed the Bucs, 62-47, in the championship game to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2001-02 season, when the Spartans won their first SoCon title under Fran McCaffery. UNCG lost a heartbreaking 68-64 decision in the NCAA Tournament's opening round, capping the campaign with a school-record 27 wins. A year later, the Spartans were even better, however, came up short of returning to the Dance and had to settle for a second NIT appearance in a two-year span, as the Spartans were downed 70-58 in the championship by Wofford, who went on to that magical 30-win season. The Spartans were the top overall seed in the NIT, and after defeating Campbell, 84-69, in the opening round, UNCG had reached a school-record 29 wins. The magical season would eventually come to an end with an 86-69 loss to No. 5 seed Lipscomb in the next round. The Spartans would post a 23-9 record and third-place finish in the 2019-20 season before breaking through and winning the SoCon regular-season and tournament titles once again in the 2020-21 campaign, which saw the Spartans finish 21-9 overall and a 13-5 mark in SoCon play, as the season was shortened in the non-conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a 69-63 title game win over Mercer in Asheville, the Spartans would push Florida State in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament before eventually losing a 64-54 contest in the bubble in Indianapolis. Shortly after the NCAA Tournament exit and following a record of 185-135 over 10 seasons at UNCG, Miller would accept the offer to fill the University of Cincinnati's head coaching vacancy in the spring of 2021. 

Lamont Paris (Chattanooga 2017-2022)--Other than Furman's Niko Medved, no coach inherited a worse situation  than Paris when he arrived at Chattanooga. I'd say Paris' situation upon being named the 20th head coach at UTC in early April of 2017 was even worse than that of Medved when he took over in Greenville some four years earlier. Paris had his roster completely turned over, which was no fault of his own when he took over, as there was a mass exodus from the Mocs program in his first season as the head coach following the departure of Matt McCall to take the UMass job. Things weren't much better following winning just 10 games in Paris' first season as the head coach. Prior to even coaching one game at UTC, 11 players ended up leaving the Chattanooga basketball program prior to the 2017-18 season, and to one's real surprise, the Mocs struggled as much as any season in its storied history in the SoCon and at the NCAADivision I level to win games.  After winning a combined 22 games in his first two seasons, things would begin to take shape for Paris' Mocs and it would be the season after the COVID-19 in which the Mocs and Paris would be able to get things turned in the right direction. With the acquisition of guys like Malachi Smith from Wright State, Stefan Kenic from Cleveland State, and Josh Ayeni from South Alabama, the Mocs started to make some inroads in the 2020-21 season, starting the campaign by winning the first nine games of the season.  The Mocs would go on to finish out the season with 18-8 in the shortened season due to the pandemic, which included a 9-7 mark in Southern Conference play. The Mocs were knocked out of the conference tournament by league rival East Tennessee State, dropping a 63-53 decision to ETSU. One of the unfortunate developments prior to tip-off of that game was the Mocs were without Malachi Smith, who had tested positive for COVID-19, and that was severely detrimental to the Mocs moving far in the tournament. In the 2021-22 season, the Mocs went into the season as the preseason favorites, and would end up returning to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years, knocking off Furman in overtime in what was one of the best SoCon Tournament title games in the great history of the league, with David Jean-Baptiste's 36-footer at the buzzer of overtime sending Chattanooga to the NCAA Tournament with a 64-63 win over the Paladins. Following the heartbreaking 54-53 loss to Illinois in an opening round NCAA Tournament clash in Pittsburgh, the Mocs finished with a 27-8 record and posted the outright SoCon title with a 14-4 mark. Not 48 hours after the loss to the Illini, Paris was named as the new head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks where he remains presently installed as the head coach of the Gamecocks. Paris finished his five seasons at UTC with an 87-72 overall record. In his final season at UTC, Paris was selected by his peers as the league's coach of the year. 

Bucky McMillan (Samford, 2020-25)--The most recent coach to make the jump from the mid-major level to the power six level of coaching in college basketball is Bucky McMillan, who has agreed to become the head coach at Texas A&M following the 2024-25 season. He won 99 games in five seasons as the head coach at Samford, which included leading the Bulldogs to the 2024 NCAA Tournament, as well as an NIT at-large invitation this past season. McMillan was selected as the SoCon's Coach of the Year in three different seasons, winning the award in 2021-22, '22-23, and '23-24. No coach won more games in the Southern Conference over a four-year span than McMillan did. He inherited a mess when he took over at Samford during the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, and it wasn't all too unlike what Medved was left with when he took over at Furman, or what Paris found when he took over at Chattanooga.  He helped the Bulldogs reach a new prestige by the time he left for College Station to become the newest head coach of the Texas A&M Aggies this past spring. He won just six games total in the season after COVID-19, as the Bulldogs finished with a record of just 6-13 overall and 2-9 in Southern Conference play, which saw the Bulldogs finish dead-last (10th) in the SoCon in his first season as the head coach. Over the next four years, however, no team in the SoCon would win more games, as Bucky Ball had a notable impact and became the craze and the talk around the Southern Conference and throughout mid-major basketball. 

Ranking the Current SoCon Basketball Coaches 

1. Bob Richey (Furman 2017-present)--Having won 181 games over nine seasons at Furman, the Paladins head coach has led Furman to some pretty incredible heights during his time as the head basketball coach at Furman. Of the many milestones he has had in his nine seasons as the head coach, Richey's most cherished accomplishment as the head coach at the charter SoCon member was leading the Paladins back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 43 years when he did so during the 2022-23 season. After helping the Paladins to an 88-79 win over Chattanooga in the championship game, he led Furman to a memorable 68-67 win over Virginia in an opening round NCAA Tournament game in Orlando, as the Paladins became just the third SoCon team to win an NCAA Tournament game in the 21st century, joining both Davidson (2008) and Wofford (2019) as the only SoCon teams to do so. The 28 games won by the 2022-23 team were the most in program history, and putting the cherry on top of all of it was developing Jalen Slawson into a player good enough to draw the attention of the NBA, as he became the 54th overall pick in the second round by Sacramento Kings in the 2023 NBA Draft. Richey's motion offense with Princeton concepts mixed in is some of the prettiest offensive basketball you'll find at the mid-major level. An offensive mastermind, Richey was the lone coach kept on staff by Niko Medved when he took over as the head coach in the spring of 2013. The Paladins have become known as one of the best perimeter shooting teams in mid-major basketball during Richey's time as the head coach, as well as being routinely ranked in KenPom's Top 50 when it comes to offensive efficiency. Over the past eight seasons under Richey, the Paladins have connected on 2,690-of-7,285 from three-point range, which converts to 36.9%. The Paladins connected on 380 three-point field goals during the 2024-25 season, connecting at a 36.6% clip from long-range, which was good enough for second overall in the SoCon this season. Richey did arguably his best job coaching in the 2024-25 season, leading the Paladins to a 25-win season and an appearance in the 2025 SoCon Tournament title game against Wofford, as the Paladins would come up just short against a hot-shooting Terriers squad that shot over 60% for the game and hit 14 threes to come up with a thrilling 92-85 win in the championship game. Richey and staff did a masterful job in replacing 70.8% of his scoring from a year earlier, turning those lemons into some pretty sweet lemonade in Greenville. The Paladins posted their 14th 20-win season, including their seventh since 2016-17 and sixth under the direction in eight seasons under Richey. Though having never won SoCon Coach of the Year, Richey has more wins than any SoCon Coach in the past eight seasons (181-81) and is averaging 22.6 wins-per-season over that span, which ranks sixth (two-season minimum) in average wins per season in the tradition-rich history of the SoCon. The 22.6 wins-per-season by Richey in eight seasons at Furman ranks just behind some legends of ancient and recent past in the league, including Everett Case (26.7/7 seasons at NC State), Steve Forbes (26.0/5 seasons at ETSU), and John Kresse (23.8/4 seasons at CofC as a coach in the SoCon), while ranking just ahead of legendary Mocs head coach Murray Arnold (22.5/6 seasons at UTC). Richey has also led the Paladins to their first-ever AP Top 25 national ranking (2018-19), and wins over several power six programs, including No. 8 and reigning national champion Villanova (2018-19), Louisville (2021-22), South Carolina (2022-23), Virginia (2022-23). Though Richey was courted by South Carolina prior to the 2022-23, he ultimately returned to Furman and ended up leading the Paladins back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1980. Since then, however, though his name has been mentioned and has interviewed for several major job openings, he has remained firm at Furman. In addition to leading the Paladins back to the NCAA Tournament, Richey has also led Furman to a pair of NIT appearances in his eight seasons at the helm (2019 and '25). Prior to his arrival at Furman in the spring of 2011 as an assistant coach for the Paladins under former head coach Jeff Jackson. Richey spent five years under the leadership Barclay Radebaugh from 2006-11, helping bring in five of the program’s top 11 scorers all time, including Saah Nimley, who is the current head coach at Charleston Southern. The Paladins are slated to open the 40-million dollar renovated Timmons Arena in 2025-26, which is loosely referred to as "The house that Bob Richey built."


2 Dan Earl (Chattanooga 2022-present/VMI 2016-22)--Dan Earl was on top of the mid-major basketball world this past April when he led the Mocs to heights no Southern Conference program had ever reached, which is a National Invitational Tournament (NIT) title and did that on the back of dropping a heartbreaking 80-77 overtime decision in the Southern Conference Tournament semifinal, as the Mocs were relegated to trying to win the NIT, which would be exactly what they would end up doing, as the Mocs won at Middle Tennessee State (W, 109-103 3OT), vs. Dayton (W, 87-72), at Bradley (W, 67-65), vs. Loyola-Chicago (W, 80-73), and vs. UC Irvine (W, 85-84 OT) in the championship game. Earl let the Mocs to their first nationally-recognized title as an NCAA Division I program, and it is also the SoCon's first NCAA sanctioned national title on the college basketball hardwood. No SoCon team had gone past the semifinal round of the tournament prior to UTC's breakthrough during the 2024-25 season. Earl is part of a class of coaches in the SoCon that are proven winners. The Mocs head coach will head into his fourth season at the helm of the Chattanooga basketball program, having compiled a 68-38 mark in three seasons as the head coach in the Scenic City. He led the Mocs to a school-record 29 wins this past season, as Chattanooga completed the 2024-25 season with a 29-9 mark, winning 17 out of their final 18 games of the season, with the only loss coming in the SoCon semifinals. The Mocs put together an impressive 15-3 Southern Conference regular-season mark to claim the regular-season title, which was the first the Mocs have claimed under Earl in three seasons. He also led the Mocs to the SoCon title game in his first season at the helm in 2022-23, as he did so despite some injury issues, including to his best player, Jake Stephens, who missed a large portion of regular-season Southern Conference play with a hand injury. Heading to Asheville as the No. 7 overall seed, he helped the Mocs make a run all the way to the title game, playing four games in four days only to come up just short of the ultimate goal, as top-seeded Furman went on to the 88-79 win in the championship tilt. Earl proved even more how good of a coach he really is in his time prior to arriving in Chattanooga, where he was coach of VMI for seven seasons, compiling a record of 73-139 mark, including leading the Keydets to a sixth-place finish in the regular-season SoCon standings in his final season as the head coach in Lexington and an 18-17 overall record to end the season. He helped lead VMI to consecutive .500 or better seasons in his final two campaigns as the head coach in Lexington, marking the first time that had happened since 2010-12. If you know anything about mid-major college basketball, then you know that VMI is one of the toughest jobs in all of college basketball--maybe the absolute toughest. Like Richey at Furman, Earl's teams at both VMI and Chattanooga have run great offensive sets out of a motion offense, and it focuses on cutting and having skilled big men that can pass. There's no better coach in the league at developing skilled big men, especially ones that can pass out of the post like UTC's Earl. It led to some big three-point field goal shooting numbers during his time as the head coach at both Chattanooga and VMI. In his final season as the head coach at VMI, Earl's Keydets knocked down 401 three-pointers, which wasn second-most in the country that season, while his 2022-23 UTC squad set a Southern Conference Tournament record with 43 triples connected on in four games in the Mocs' run to the title in that particular season. Earl also picked up one of the biggest wins of his coaching career during the 2023-24 season at UTC, where he led the Mocs to an 81-71 win at Louisville en route to a 21-12 season and a third-place finish in the Southern Conference standings last season. The only thing that has eluded Earl in his time coaching in the Southern Conference is a tournament title and a trip to the NCAA Tournament. He has led the Mocs to at least the semifinals of the tournament in each of his three seasons as the head coach, and was named the SoCon's "Coach of the Year" by both the media and his peers following the 2024-25 regular-season title. Prior to becoming a head coach at VMI in 2015-16, Earl spent time learning his craft as an assistant coach at both his alma mater Penn State (2006-11) and Navy (2011-15) where he served under former SoCon title-winning coach Ed DeChellis. Earl was given the reins at Navy as the offensive coordinator, as he would also be the Associate Head Coach during his time in Anapolis with the Midshipmen. Finally, Earl has been able to build both continuity and quality within his staff during his 10 seasons as a head coach in the SoCon, building one of the best staffs in the league at both VMI and UTC. Anders Galfsky is Earl's top assistant and associate head coach, and he's developed into one of the top assistants in mid-major basketball in his time spent under Earl at both VMI and now at Chattanooga. All told at both VMI and Chattanooga, Earl has compiled an overall record of 141-177, which includes a mark of 68-108 in SoCon play. He's already reached 34 wins in league play in three seasons at UTC, and it took him six seasons at VMI to accomplish the identical win total. Earl is not only one of the best coaches in the SoCon, he's also one of the best in mid-major basketball overall, proving that last March in the NIT. In addition to being named SoCon Coach of the Year, Earl was also the Tennessee Sports Writers Association Coach of the Year. He had his contract extended in mid-May to a new six-year deal, making him one of the highest paid coaches in the SoCon.

3. Lennie Acuff (Samford 2025-present/Lipscomb 2018-25/Alabama-Huntsville )--In many circles and depending on who you talk to, Lennie Acuff is considered a basketball savant by many, and has served as a mentor for some pretty outstanding head basketball coaches, including Furman's own Bob Richey. Acuff will now get a chance to coach against his pupil in the SoCon, as Acuff was a homerun hire for Samford during the off-season following Bucky McMillan's departure to become the head coach at Texas A&M, and some might even consider Acuff a slight upgrade from McMillan, given his track record of success at both the NCAA Division I and II levels, respectively. Acuff is a proven winner and he's been able to do it both at the NCAA Division II level as the longtime head coach of Alabama-Huntsville, and now, he's proven at the NCAA Division I level at Lipscomb, taking the Bisons to the NCAA Tournament. While Bucky McMillan was the "hometown boy" given a chance to start his collegiate coaching career in front of friends and family, which could help further launch him into even greater success now at the power six level, Lennie Acufff, who is now 68, will have the chance to close out the twilight of his stellar coaching career in his home state and now too far from friends and family to see him coach his final few years so should they choose to do so. It's not often that a program gets a chance to experience both ends of the career coaching spectrum, however, that's exactly what Samford and its basketball-excited faithful will now get to do with Acuff taking the helm. During Acuff's six years as the head coach at Lipscomb, the Bisons compiled a 110-82 overall record, which of course included getting the Nashville-based school back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2018 NCAA Tournament, which represents the only other NCAA Tournament appearance for the program. He led the Bisons to three-straight 20-win seasons as the head coach, including the Atlantic Sun regular-season and tournament titles in 2024-25. He also coached what ended up being the A-Sun's Player of the Year, in Jacob Ognacevic, as well as the tournament MVP, in former Furman guard Joe Anderson. Acuff's strong reputation as a head coach was built long before he arrived in Nashville in 2019, as he established himself as a proven winner on the hardwood during his time at NCAA Division II Alabama-Huntsville, where he spent 22 seasons as the head coach, compiling an impressive record of 437-214, which included winning seasons in 20 out of the 22 he spent in charge of the Chargers. He led UAH to eight regular-season Gulf South Conference crowns and three Gulf South Conference Tournament titles in his 22 seasons and left as the program's all-time winningest head coach. His job won't be as much about rebuilding Samford, as it will be sustaining its perch as a new mid-major power and perennial SoCon title contender. In the age of NIL and the transfer portal, that will now be increasingly difficult, even for coaches as good as Acuff.

4. Mike Jones (UNC Greensboro 2021-present/Radford 2011-21)--This will be an unpopular selection at No. 4 for some, as Mike Jones has yet to win when it matters in his four seasons at the helm of the UNC Greensboro basketball program, which means he hasn't made it past the first day in the Southern Conference Tournament at the Harrah's Cherokee Center in Asheville. Conventional wisdom, however, is that he will be able to figure that eventually. After all, he's led the Spartans to three-straight 20-win seasons and has finished no lower than third in any of the three previous campaigns. He also established himself as a proven winner during his time at Radford, where he spent the previous decade building the Highlanders into a Big South power, taking over that program when it was struggling during a probation period under NCAA sanctions. All told in his time as the head coach of the Highlanders, Jones would win 174 games and led Radford to a remarkable run in the 2017-18 season, which would eventually see the Highlanders win the Big South Tournament to qualify for the Big Dance for just the third time in program history. Jones also won a First Four game against Long Island in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, leading the Highlanders to a 71-61 win in Dayton before eventually getting knocked out of the tournament by Villanova. Jones has won at every stop along the way, and it hasn't really mattered where he has been the head coach, as he won 20 or more games in five different seasons at Radford and has already accomplished the feat three times in four seasons at UNCG. However, fans are getting a little bit restless with his inability to win the first game of the Southern Conference Tournament in Asheville, with the latest team he took to the Altitude City coming away with a 64-57 loss to No. 7 seed VMI. So far during his time at UNCG, Jones has posted a record of 78-50 as the head coach and has a combined record of 252-200 at both UNCG and Radford as a head coach. During his time coaching both, Jones has some rather big wins under his belt, having taken down Notre Dame, Texas, and Northwestern during his time as the head coach of Radford, while having posted a 78-72 win in the 2023-24 season in arguably his biggest win non-conference as a head coach at No. 14 Arkansas. Jones and the Spartans will have the opportunity to be "giant slayers" once again this season, as the Spartans will travel to take on Will Wade's North Carolina State team in the upcoming 2025-26 season. Jones cites some important coaching mentors in his career as an assistant, which actually started at Furman in 1997, where he spent three seasons from 1997-2000. He cites former Georgia head coach Dennis Felton and former VCU head coach Shaka Smart as shaping and mentoring him as a young coach. Jones certainly had some tough shoes to fill after succeeding such a successful coach like Wes Miller as a predecessor, but he's done a pretty good job thus far. Now it's about taking that next step in the postseason and figuring out that championship puzzle.

5. Brooks Savage (East Tennessee State 2023-present)--In just two seasons as the head coach of East Tennessee State, Brooks Savage has won 38 games and has already changed the complexion of ETSU basketball and its fan base into being believers for big things on the college basketball hardwood once again. In his first season as the head coach in 2023-24, Savage helped the Bucs to 19 wins and a run all the way to the SoCon title game as the No. 7 seed, where ETSU would come up just short of the title, with a 76-69 loss to Samford in the championship tilt. In the 2024-25 season, Savage and the Bucs had some pretty lofty expectations after that run from a year earlier, with some, including myself, predicting the Bucs to win it all in Asheville, and while that didn't happen, the Bucs did finish the regular-season in impressive fashion, posting a third-place finish in the league standings with a 12-6 mark, which included sweeping defending champion Samford. Savage is a big believer in getting his teams to play hard-nosed basketball, but to play within themselves. In an era of do-everything in a hurry, that's not the style for coach Savage even though he wants to have a basketball team that is exciting to watch and has fun while doing it. In fact, he's a coach that is against the "play fast now ask questions later" mentality that many coaches in this era not only embrace, but endorse as part of their culture. Savage is more of a coach that would like his team to play fast when they need to, but to play smart and be hard-nosed on the defensive end as being part of his team's primary DNA. One of the things that ETSU has done exceptionally well in Savage's first couple of seasons as the head coach in Johnson City is rebound the basketball exceptionally well. The Bucs led the league in offensive rebounds per game two years ago (13.9 ORB per game) and ranked third (12.6 ORB per game) this past season. In Asheville this past March, the Bucs saw their season come to an end much earlier than expected, with a 72-60 loss to eventual champion and No. 6 seed Wofford in what was the second really major upset of the tournament following up VMI's win over UNCG. However, by the time the Bucs had reached March, they were struggling with injury issues, which had caused them to have some depth issues by the time they arrived for the tournament. Savage helped procure the services of Quimari Peterson from the JUCO ranks, and in two seasons with the Bucs, helped him become SoCon Player of the Year as the head coach this past March. In two seasons as the head coach, Savage and his staff also helped transform Jaden Seymour into a pro talent, which saw Seymour go from a player that was averaging 8.7 PPG prior to Savage's arrival to averaging 14.7 PPG and would become one of the top players in the Southern Conference by the end of his first season as the head coach. This past season was Seymour's best of all, as he posted a 15.4 PPG scoring average, as well as 6.6 RPG. He also posted just the program's third all-time triple-double along the way, doing so in ETSU's SoCon-opening win over VMI at Freedom Hall on New Year's Day 2025. He also brought in Karon Boyd from USC Aiken and in two years with the Bucs, would become the SoCon's Defensive Player of the Year this past March and become maybe the SoCon's top "glue guy" and was a fan favorite. Though he was the offensive coordinator at Wake Forest in his final two years there, he has helped ETSU be one of the top defensive units in the SoCon in his first two seasons as the head coach of the Bucs, helping the Bucs rank second in scoring defense in each of his first two campaigns as the head coach of the Bucs. In conference games only, the Bucs ranked better than anyone during the 2024-25 season, with a 101.4 defensive efficiency according to KenPom, ranking second in the league in turnover percentage (19.1) and second in both effective field goal percentage defense (49.6%) as well as second in 2pt field goal percentage defense (47.5%). Savage has built up quite the resume in his 12 years as an assistant coach. He’s been prepared by some of the best, which of course includes Forbes. This season will mark the seventh time he’s been a part of a first-year staff. Savage knows Southern Conference basketball, having been a part of the league’s two most decorated programs. He served as an assistant coach at Chattanooga from 2013-15 under the direction of Will Wade and as an assistant with ETSU from 2015-2020 under Steve Forbes, who Savage considers as his primary mentor in coaching and also a good friend. All told at both ETSU and Wake Forest, Savage spent a total of eight years coaching under Forbes at the NCAA Division I level, and that doesn't include the 2011-12 season, which he spent coaching as one of Forbes' assistant at Northwest Florida State, helping the program to a school-record 32 wins and a NJCAA national runner-up finish that particular season. Savage and his current staff have already been hard at work in the portal and have put together what I think is the best incoming transfer portal class heading into the 2025-26 season. Through two seasons as the head coach in Johnson City, Savage has posted a 38-29 overall record.


6. Tim Craft (Western Carolina 2024-present/Gardner-Webb 2013-24)- Craft's coaching ability was blatantly clear last season, and what he did to improve Western Carolina during the season was almost as remarkable as what Andrew Wilson was able to do at VMI. Craft spent his first season in Cullowhee trying to figure out the right mix among the players he had. Over the final month-and-a-half of the 2024-25 season, things finally started to click for the Catamounts and they would be competitive in nearly every game over the course of the final month of the season, and would even post maybe the biggest win of the season for the Catamounts in a 74-67 win over East Tennessee State in the middle of February. The Bucs might have been a little short-handed playing with Jaden Seymour, but that didn't matter to Craft and the Catamounts, who posted a win that was something to be able to hang their proverbial hat on for the rest of the season and something to build on moving forward. As fate would have it, the Catamounts would end up facing off against the other team with a brand-new head coach in the opening game of the 2025 Southern Conference Tournament, as No. 9 Western Carolina took on No. 8 Mercer in Asheville. The Bears were being led by the other first-year head coach in the SoCon, in Ryan Ridder, and what would play out over the course of 40 minutes at the Harrah's Cherokee Center was one of the top games of the 2025 tournament, as the Bears held on for the 67-66 win to move on to play top-seeded Chattanooga in the opening quarterfinal matchup of quarterfinal Saturday at the tournament. Mercer also held the distinction of being WCU's first Southern Conference win under Craft's leadership, as WCU would knock off the Bears, 85-82, in an overtime thriller at the Ramsey Center in a game that was delayed by one day due to the effects of snowstorm Cora. The Catamounts were beaten by double digits in six out of their first nine SoCon games in the month of January, however, in six of their final nine losses, which includes the SoCon Tournament loss to Mercer, the Catamounts lost by 10 points or less. Only Samford (W, 92-73), Wofford (W, 90-67) and Mercer (W, 81-69) were able to post double-digit wins over the Catamounts. As I mentioned in the portal update on Western Carolina, nowhere could Craft's coaching more be visibly understood better than the transformation in the play and confidence of Marcus Kell, who went from an afterthought under Justin Gray to an all-conference caliber performer under Craft. It could be argued there was no better player in the SoCon over the final month of the season. With Kell and Pelote leading the way, the Catamounts became a problem--even for the league's top teams like Chattanooga and Furman, with the Paladins needing overtime to knock off the Catamounts in Greenville, surviving to get an 84-75 win after trailing much of the night. The Paladins had won by 29 at WCU on New Year's Day. That same narrative would be true for Chattanooga, which had beaten the Catamounts 84-60 in Cullowhee in January. In a late-season clash between the two, the Mocs survived to get a 91-86 win at the Roundhouse. Though the Catamounts were just 8-22 overall and only 4-14 in Southern Conference play, many can attest how much the team improved from early January until the end of the season. Craft is no stranger to success nor is he a stranger to building teams in small towns in North Carolina into being winners. One need look no further than what he was able to do in Boiling Springs, N.C., in his time prior to arriving in Cullowhee as the head coach at Gardner-Webb. He led the Runnin' Bulldogs to the 2019 NCAA Tournament, as Gardner-Webb won 23 games and even put a first half scare into eventual national champion Virginia in the NCAA Tournament before the Cavaliers used their experience and talent advantage to eventually overcome Gardner-Webb in the second half. He had a pair of 20-win seasons during his time as Gardner-Webb's head coach, as well as leading the Runnin' Bulldogs to nine.500 or better seasons in his 11 as the head coach. In addition to leading the Bulldogs to the 2019 NCAA Tournament, Craft was also responsible for helping the Bulldogs to the 2014-15 CBI. Craft spent time as an assistant under Jeff Lebo at both East Carolina (2010-13) and Auburn (2008-10), as well as serving as an assistant at Gardner-Webb (2004-07) and Pensacola JC (2002-04). Craft started his coaching career at Robert F. Munroe high school as an assistant in 2000-01 before serving for one season as the head coach a year later (2001-02). In his time as a head coach at both Western Carolina and Gardner-Webb over 12 seasons, Craft has a record of 196-188. I expect Craft will ascend this list quickly, and if I update this list in two or three years, he will not be in eighth any longer and could very well have broken into the top four of this list by that time.

7. Dwight Perry (Wofford 2022-Present)--In just his third season as the head coach of Wofford, head coach Dwight Perry had the Wofford Terriers dancing as a part of March Madness, as he led the Terriers to a cinderella-like run through the Southern Conference Tournament this past March, as the Terriers took down No. 3 seed East Tennessee State (W, 72-60), No. 7 VMI (W, 85-65) and arch-rival Furman (W, 92-85) en route to leading Wofford to its sixth appearance in the Big Dance overall. In 2022, Perry was named the interim head coach at Wofford after an investigation into head coach Jay McAuley ended up eventually leading to his firing amid allegations of mistreatment of players in the program. Despite having a start that involved some crisis management skills as much as coaching acumen, Perry didn't flinch and the moment wasn't too big for him even though it was his first time leading a program as a head coach. His audition for the part ended up yielding a permanent status, with his installation as being officially named the head coach of Wofford's basketball program shortly after the 2022-23 season. Perry's interim season would see him lead the Terriers basketball program in an important moment, as the program was in a spot of thin ice so-to-speak, with a mass exodus out of the program having already taken place in the off-season between the 2021-22 and the 2022-23 seasons, and even after Perry's first interim season, even more players exiting the program like BJ Mack, who would go on to play his final season at South Carolina for Lamont Paris in 2023-24. Shortly after taking over, Perry and the Terriers went to College Station and took down Texas A&M, with a 67-62 win over an Aggies team coached by Buzz Williams, which went to finish second in the SEC that season, posting a 15-3 mark and finished with a 25-10 record and ranked No. 17 in the country. Perry's interim season would see the Terriers finish out the campaign with a 17-16 overall record, including an 8-10 mark in Southern Conference play. The Terriers were the No. 6 seed in Asheville, and would end up getting a thrilling, buzzer-beating effort from BJ Mack, as Wofford held off No. 3 seed UNC Greensboro for a 67-66 win. After being named the official head coach shortly after the season, the 2023-24 campaign would see Perry's Terriers finish the season with a nearly identical 17-15 record, which included finishing better in Southern Conference play, as Wofford went on to post a 10-8 mark, which was good enough for another sixth-place finish in the league standings. Unfortunately for Perry and the Terriers, however, the time spent in Asheville would ultimately be short-lived, as Chattanooga ended the Terriers' SoCon Tournament run abruptly, capturing what was a 75-57 win over the Terriers. In winning the tournament this past March, the Terriers would reel off wins against East Tennessee State (W, 72-60), VMI (W, 85-65) and Furman (W, 92-85). Wofford, which was making its sixth NCAA Tournament since 2010, was a No. 15 seed and fell 77-62 to the No. 2 Tennessee Volunteers. Prior to becoming the head coach of the Terriers, Perry spent three seasons as an assistant coach with the Terriers before being named the interim head coach and eventually the full-time head coach. Prior to his arrival as part of Jay McAualey's staff at Wofford in 2019-20, Perry spent five seasons as an assistant at Furman, with three spent under Niko Medved and two under Bob Richey. He was a big part of helping the Paladins to an impressive 91-68 record over that span, which included three 20-win seasons, while being instrumental in helping coach and recruit 17 all-conference and all-freshman selections, which included a pair of SoCon Players of the Year and a SoCon Freshman of the Year. Prior to coming to Furman, Perry got his career started in coaching at VCU under former head coach Shaka Smart, where he was the Rams' video coordinator. Perry, a native of Durham, N.C., is a 2010 graduate of the University of Kentucky where he played from 2007-10 and earned a degree in business management. In three seasons as the Wofford men's basketball coach, Perry has compiled an overall record of 48-43 in his third season.


8. Andrew Wilson (VMI 2022-Present)--At the beginning of last year, I'm not sure where I would have had VMI head coach Andrew Wilson on this list, and this year, I am still not sure whether or not No. 7 is too low or not, but what I can tell you is the guy can flat out coach, and the second thing is, what he did by helping VMI to a 15-19 record in his third season at the helm in Lexington was nothing short of being absolutely remarkable in so many ways. The challenge now will be sustaining the success and building on what he had from this past season. He helped VMI to a 7-11 record in the Southern Conference this past season, and in March at the Southern Conference Tournament at the Harrah's Cherokee Center in Asheville, he helped lead the Keydets to a 64-57 upset win over UNCG in the quarterfinals following up a tournament-opening 73-62 win over The Citadel, completing a three-game sweep of the Keydets' bitter rival. Though he has just a 26-72 record in three seasons as VMI's head coach, the adversity and ability to overcome and persevere despite it are two of the most impressive attributes about Wilson as a head basketball coach. When he helped VMI to the SoCon semifinals last March, he did so with not only one of the youngest teams in the Southern Conference, but also one of the youngest teams in college basketball. VMI ranked 336th out of 364 NCAA Division I teams in average age this past season. Youth is something Wilson has had to had to deal with in each of his three seasons as the head coach of the Keydets, due primarily to players leaving on account of either VMI not having a graduate program, but more often than not just leaving due to the fact that they weren't about that military lifestyle. The good news is, for the first time since taking over as the head coach Wilson was able to keep most of his top players around, as the Keydets lost only one real key piece, in Augustinas Kiudulas, to the transfer portal from last year's team that saw an 11-win improvement, which marked VMI's greatest single-season turnaround since 1908, as only 14 schools in the country improved by 10 or more wins from the 2023-24 season. The 15 wins in a single-season marked just the 12th time in program history that the Keydets were able to achieve that win total and only the seventh time in VMI's 89-year history in two different stints as a SoCon hoops member. It's almost hard to put into writing how good and refreshing it was to see VMI's turnaround last season as compared to Wilson's first two seasons in charge. In his very first season, the Keydets were ravaged by injuries so much that he didn't even have enough players to play a 5-on-5 scrimmage in practice for the entire season! The Keydets won three-straight SoCon road games for the first time since 1998 and knocked off both The Citadel and UNCG for the first-time ever in the Southern Conference Tournament. The Keydets' two wins in the tournament in Asheville were the most in the conference tourney since 2002-03 and just the second time in 37 years. VMI's two most-impressive wins in SoCon player were a 91-82 home triumph over Furman, marking the program's first over the Paladins since the 2021-22 season, as well as knocking off eventual SoCon champion Wofford, 74-67, in Spartanburg near the end of January. So what's Wilson's specialty? It's defense. A former player at Florida State, Wilson cites the outstanding former Seminoles head coach Leonard Hamilton as being one of his biggest mentors and being most influential in his coaching philosophy. Wilson's ability to change defenses mid-possession reminds me a little of some of the stuff Duggar Baucom did at The Citadel when he coached there, but Wilson's team this past season played outstanding in the matchup zone. It also was a little reminiscent of some of the things that Dan Earl did during his time as the head coach of VMI before moving on to Chattanooga after the 2021-22 season. With players like point guard Tan Yildizoglu, top defender AJ Clark and leading scoring and shooting guard Rickey Bradley returning, a top half or even a top 3-4 finish and a dark horse as a SoCon title contender in 2025-26 are real possibilities for VMI next season. With that said, it was enough to get Wilson a nice pay raise and extend his contract through the 2029-30 season during the off-season. Prior to coming to VMI, Wilson spent time learning under current Vanderbilt head coach Mark Byington at both James Madison (2 seasons) and Georgia Southern (7 seasons) and spent six seasons coaching with Byington at College of Charleston under the leadership of the coaching legend Bobby Cremins (2006-12), as he coached the Cougars in the Southern Conference. After Cremins stepped down in the middle of the season in 2011-12, Mark Byington became the interim head coach, but CofC didn't extend the offer to Byington, who eventually moved on to Georgia Southern to become the head coach of the Eagles. Interestingly, the three top assistants at College of Charleston under Cremins are all now head coaches, with Wilson (VMI), Byington (Vanderbilt) and Kyle Perry (Converse) all being part of a great staff assembled by Cremins. They helped CofC average 22 wins a season from 2006-11 and four 20-win seasons overall. Also, Wilson was part of a staff that helped lure one of the greatest players ever to CofC, in Andrew Goudelock, who was eventually drafted in 2011 NBA Draft by the Los Angeles Lakers. Wilson served one season as an assistant at Binghamton before returning to coach at Georgia Southern under Byington. Though battling injuries throughout his career, Wilson received two medical redshirts and played six years (2000-06) under Leonard Hamilton for the Florida State Seminoles. He has an exciting future, and he is a great person, and I look forward to covering Wilson's VMI teams as he continues to build a successful program in Lexington.


9. Ryan Ridder (Mercer 2024-present/UT Martin 2021-24/Bethune-Cookman (2017-20/Daytona State 2013-17)--Ryan Ridder is another of mid-major basketball's young and upcoming head coaches, and the Southern Conference seems to be the place to find those these days. In his first season as head coach at Mercer, Ridder spent time figuring out his team and his players, as well as trying to mend the culture, which Mercer isn't so far removed from, which came under Bob Hoffman some 11 years ago in what was Mercer's final season as a member of the Atlantic Sun, winning that league and then beating Duke in one of the most historic NCAA Tournament victories in the great history of the Big Dance. Ridder's job is to figure out the difficult road back to sustained success for a Mercer program that hasn't been quite the same since Jibri Bryan was murdered at Breakers convenience store less than a mile from campus back in February of 2016. But if we learned anything of Ridder last season, we saw a humble coach trying to get a finger on the pulse of what makes the program tick, and how to revive a program that has proven it can win. Ridder made a shrewd move by bringing in assistant coach Langston Hall during the off-season, as he is a direct link to Mercer's most successful days as a winning program. If nothing else, he will be able to relay the vibe of what it was like when Mercer really had it rolling in its latter days as an A-Sun member. Like Craft, it's hard to believe that someone as successful as Ridder would be considered ninth of 10 coaches in any league, but after one season, it's hard to evaluate a coach fully so that's where he ended up in the rankings. That said, I doubt he remains in this spot, having already shown the ability to transform programs with much greater challenges, such as Bethune-Cookman and UT-Martin. Ridder racked up 48 wins in three seasons as the Skyhawks' head coach, and that included a 21-11 mark in the 2023-24 season. In his 10 seasons as a head coach at Mercer (2024-present), UT Martin (2021-24), Bethune Cookman (2017-20) and JUCO Daytona State (2013-17), Ridder sports an overall mark of 205-139. During the 2023-24 season, Ridder would help lead the Skyhawks to 21 wins and a co-regular-season title-place in the Ohio Valley Conference. In 2022-23, Ridder helped the Skyhawks to 19 wins, which marked the fifth-most wins in a season in school history, and were part of a nine-game turnaround from his first season in charge of the program. In Mercer's 70-67 win at VMI this past season, Ridder reached a milestone with his 200th game as a head coach. Ridder has an eye for talent, and like others who have coached in and have been successful in this league--former and current ETSU coaches Steve Forbes and Brooks Savage--Ridder has a unique background of being able to not only find and evaluate talent from the JUCO ranks, but also develop. That will definitely be something to watch as his career moves forward in Macon. In his first season, he led the Bears to a decent 14-19 season, which included a 6-12 mark and seventh-place finish in league play.

10. Ed Conroy (The Citadel 2022-Present/Tulane 2011-22/The Citadel 2006-10)—Ed Conroy might be the top Xs and Os coach in the Southern Conference, so when The Citadel struggled on the hardwood during the 2024-25 season, it wasn’t necessarily a complete reflection Conroy as a head basketball coach. What it did reveal in some respects was the fact that there was a breakdown in talent assessment overall somewhere in regards to The Citadel’s first real major transfer portal haul. The fact is that The Citadel might actually in fact be the most difficult basketball job in all of the country, even having overtaken its league rival in that respect. The Bulldogs endured what was an incredibly difficult 2024-25 season, as for the second time in program history, and for the second time in the past decade, the Bulldogs went winless in Southern Conference play. The Bulldogs took Furman and Western Carolina to overtime and even thought they had won at the buzzer in the Scenic City over eventual SoCon regular-season champion Chattanooga until it was rightly waved off, as the shot came just after the buzzer. It was that kind of season in Charleston. The good news is Conroy isn’t the type of coach to get down on himself or the program, and is the essence of “The Citadel man” for his persevering attitude. He’s also the best coach the school has had since the great Les Robinson was patrolling the sidelines of McAlister Field House and the mid-1970s-early 80s before leaving to take over at league rival East Tennessee State in 1985. In Conroy’s second season as the head coach in the 2007-08 season, the Bulldogs won just one game in league play (1-19) and were just 6-24 overall. Year two saw big improvements, as the Bulldogs finished with 14 more wins overall (20-13) and improved by a whopping 14 wins in conference play (15-5), as it was the biggest turnarounds in The Citadel basketball history. His selection as the 2008-09 SoCon Coach of the Year was pretty much a “no-brainer.” Not only has Conroy coached in two different stints for the Bulldogs, but was also a player at The Citadel from 1985-89, and was a tremendous shooter, still ranking among the top 10 in program history in career free throw percentage (81.5%) and career three-point field percentage (39.5%). In his first stint as the Bulldogs head basketball coach from 2006-10, Conroy helped turn a program around that had struggled mightily in the final few seasons under Pat Dennis—the longest tenured coach in The Citadel’s basketball history, spending 14 seasons at the helm from 1993-2006. Among his accomplishments in his first stint as head coach, Conroy guided the Bulldogs to a win over a Stephen Curry-led Davidson team, the program’s first 20-win season in 30 years, and a first-ever postseason berth in a non-conference basketball tournament, when the Bulldogs were selected to be part of the 2009 CollegeInsider.com Tournament. The Bulldogs’ signature season under Conroy the first time around came in the 2008-09 season, which saw the Bulldogs finish the season with an impressive 20-13 record, which included a 15-5 record in the SoCon’s South Division, which was good enough to tie for second place in the league standings with cross-town rival program College of Charleston, which was coached by Bobby Cremins at that time. Conroy and the Bulldogs would sweep their cross-town rivals during the 2008-09 season, downing the Cougars 72-58 at Kresse Arena and posted a 72-63 win at McAlister Field House. Conroy would lead the Bulldogs to a 16-16 mark overall and 9-9 conference record in 2009-10, and over the course of two seasons, the Bulldogs’ 36 wins in consecutive seasons were the most in school history, eclipsing the 34 won by Les Robinson in 1977-78 and 1978-79. All that winning by Conroy in two seasons at a program that didn’t normally win was enough to draw attention from other, bigger programs, and after just four seasons, Conroy accepted a job offer at Tulane as head coach of the Green Wave from 2010-16. He helped lead the Green Wave to two postseason berths and first 20-win season in 13 years, however, Tulane’s treatment of Conroy in revealing that news was not very becoming of the Tulane basketball program, as he would find out about his firing from a media member. Conroy posted a 92-103 record at Tulane in six years as the head coach, leading the program to appearances in the CBI and CIT, and leading their transition into the American Conference. He would then serve in stints as an assistant coach at Vanderbilt (2021-22) and Minnesota (2016-21) prior to returning to The Citadel to take the head coaching position prior to the 2022-23 season. The Bulldogs would post a 10-22 mark overall and a ninth-place finish in the 10-team league with a 5-13 record in his first season back as head coach. The season would be highlighted by a 69-65 win over eventual league champion Furman in mid-February. The 2023-24 season would see a one-game improvement in the overall record, as the Bulldogs finished 11-21 overall, however, the Bulldogs won two less games in league, finishing just 3-15 and in ninth place for a second-straight season. In addition to being the head coach of Francis Marion, The Citadel and Tulane, Conroy has also spent time as an assistant at Coastal Carolina (2005-06), Tennessee (2001-05), Tulsa (2000-01), Furman (1994-97), VMI (1993-94) and NC State (1990-93). All told, Conroy has posted an overall record of 208-286 as a head coach at three different places in his career, which spans a total over 16 seasons, and he’s 75-143 over the course of seven seasons in two different stints as the Bulldogs’ head coach.

NCAA Division I Tournament Berths as Head Coaches:

Bob Richey (1 at Furman; led Furman to 2019 and 2025 NITs; has wins over Villanova, Louisville, Loyola-Chicago (2) and South Carolina in his tenure as Furman's head coach)

Dan Earl (none as a head coach at VMI or Chattanooga, but won SoCon's only ever NIT title)

Lennie Acuff (1 at Lipscomb; has over 400 wins as head coach at Alabama-Huntsville and Lipscomb)

Mike Jones (1 at Radford; has led UNCG to 20-win seasons in each of the past three seasons)

Brooks Savage (0 as head coach in only two seasons at ETSU; led the Bucs to a title game appearance in 2024 and 3rd place finish last season; back-to-back 19-win campaigns)

Tim Craft (1 at Gardner-Webb in 2019; transformed Marcus Kell into one of the best players in the SoCon this past season)

Dwight Perry (1 at Wofford in 2025; has managed adversity and been able to overcome so big losses in his short time at Wofford; led the Terriers to wins over Texas A&M in Dec. of 2022 and notched a huge non-conference win at Saint Louis in Dec. 2024)

Andrew Wilson (0 at VMI, but is coming off an 11-win improvement, which was one of the best in all of college hoops last season).

Ryan Ridder (0 as head coach so far, but has led remarkable turnarounds at places without tremendous tradition like UT Martin and Bethune Cookman; Led Bethune Cookman to a share of the 2017-18 MEAC Title; Led UT-Martin to a share of the 2023-24 regular-season OVC title

Ed Conroy (0 NCAA Tournaments as a head coach; Led The Citadel to the 2009 CIT; Led Tulane to the CIT and CBI tournaments in 2013 and '14, respectively.

SoCon Basketball Portal and Recruiting Profiles Heading into 2025-26 Part 3-of-4: (A League-wide overview; Tracking VMI, Mercer, Western Carolina and The Citadel's Off-Season Moves)

 

VMI rising junior point guard Tan Yildizoglu vs. Furman

7. VMI (15-19, 7-11/7th in SoCon)--If there was a breakthrough team in the Southern Conference last season,  it was VMI. The improvement head coach Andrew Wilson's club and the commitment VMI's athletic department has made to basketball was evident from the outset of the season, and despite having one of the youngest teams in the nation once again in Wilson's third season, the Keydets also had one of the most improved teams, as the Red and Gold went from just four wins two years ago to 15 last season and a trip to the SoCon Tournament semifinals, upsetting No. 2 seed UNC Greensboro en route to getting to the semifinals of the tournament after winning through from the opening round of the tournament. 

One of the major commitments to the program and to its improvement was being able to admit transfers, and that was something that not only helped the Keydets be competitive, but be competitive near the top of the league and in the mix for a top six seed all the way until the final day of the season. In mid-February, VMI sat in sixth place ahead of Furman in the running for a top six seed and a bye in the opening round of the Southern Conference Tournament. 

Although the Keydets struggled down the stretch, they did enough to finish in seventh and headed to Asheville as perhaps the most dangerous play-in day teams in league tournament history. No one really wanted to tangle with the Keydets in Asheville, which was the task that eventually fell to Mike Jones' UNCG Spartans, who had beaten the Keydets twice in the regular-season, but anything can and usually does happen in Asheville.

After dispatching The Citadel, 73-62, in the second game of the tournament, the Keydets posted an outstanding defensive performance, utilizing a matchup zone along with mixing in other defenses to keep the Spartans off-balance en route to a 64-57 win in the quarterfinals of the tournament. VMI would eventually run out of gas against in the semifinals of the tournament against eventual tournament champion and NCAA Tournament participant Wofford, dropping an 85-65, contest to close out a successful 2024-25 season.

There was a definite intention to go out and find guys that would not only fit Wilson's system, but also guys that might also be willing to stick around instead of immediately checking out to the transfer portal as soon as the season ended. For the first time as head coach for VMI the strategy, except for one or two departures, appears to have worked. 

The Keydets went across the pond to look for talent and they ended up procuring two of the better young players in the league, in Tan Yildizoglu and Augustinas Kiudulas. Originally, Yildizoglu hailed from Turkey and played at a high level internationally as a point guard, and despite his overall youth, he proved wise beyond his years on the court and in basketball acumen. Kiudulas, who was Lithuanian, had already made his way to the United States and after attending Indiana State for one season, which saw him rarely see the floor, he decided to transfer in to VMI. Both would end up developing into all-league caliber players in the 2024-25 season. 

The other main piece to the puzzle outside of the talent brought in from overseas were two players that were brought in from solid mid-major programs, in TJ Johnson from Lipscomb and Rickey Bradley Jr. from Georgia State. For Bradley, the decision was easy, as he had already been at VMI, garnering SoCon All-Freshman Team accolades in the 2022-23 season and after things didn't go  according to plan in his new destination, he would become the first and only one of Wilson's players to return to where he started and with the success he had this past season, he might not be the last.

Now what can Wilson and company do for an encore in his fourth year. Obviously, VMI has had trouble keeping the talent around due to the strenuous military regimen, as well as the lack of having a full graduate school program. But accepting transfers and finding loopholes to take classes at VMI through other local schools like James Madison that would count towards a graduate degree at VMI would be a start in the right direction, and would allow the Keydets to be able to keep some of that talent around for at least a year longer after they have already graduated in their major and have hardwood eligibility remaining. 

This spring was important for VMI, and making sure that retaining as much talent as he possibly could for the foreseeable future was as important as what he could bring in from the portal for Wilson. 

Wilson has to endure really one major loss, with Augustinas Kiudulas () moving on, as he transferred out of the VMI program for his final season to play at Colorado State. It appeared that Tan Yildizoglu was going to also leave for perceived greener pastures but thought better of it after entering the portal and decided to return to VMI. That was huge. 

Despite losing Kiudulas, the Keydets bring back six of their top seven leading scorers from a year ago and return the most scoring production of any team in the SoCon and the 12th most scoring production of any team in college basketball.

Headlining the returning talent for the 2025-26 season will be rising senior guard Rickey Bradley Jr., who will likely enter the campaign as an All-SoCon candidate. Bradley Jr. is coming off a 2024-25 season, which saw him named Third-Team All-SoCon last season after ranking fifth overall in the SoCon in scoring average last season, posting 16.5 PPG. Bradley Jr. and also ranked third in the SoCon in minutes per game, averaging 33.6 MPG last season. 

His 1.4 steals-per-game ranked Bradley Jr. tied for seventh in the league in that particular category and he comes off a 2024-25 season having started all 34 games for the Keydets last season. He posted his first-career double-double in VMI's upset win in the Southern Conference Tournament against UNCG, as he posted 23 points and 11 boards in the 64-57 win by the Keydets. 

Bradley Jr. scored a career-high 30 points in Mercer's early SoCon home contest against Mercer, which resulted in a 70-67 loss at Cameron Hall. In that 30-point effort, Bradley Jr. also tied a career-high with five three-pointers. He also posted 29 points in VMI's 75-70 road win at The Citadel. In VMI's late-January win at Wofford, Bradley Jr. tied a career-high five steals. Bradley Jr. also finished the season shooting 38.0% from long-range, connecting on 57-of-150 from downtown last season.

Joining Bradley Jr. as a key returnee in the backcourt is the aforementioned point guard Tan Yildizoglu, who is a rising junior and comes off a 2024-25 season, which saw him rank third overall in the SoCon in assists-per-game at 3.9 APG, and he comes off an inaugural season with the Keydets basketball program having averaged 8.5 PPG. 

Yildizoglu posted 13 double-figure scoring games last season, including each of the final three games of the season, as he had a strong showing in the 2025 Southern Conference Tournament, posting 17 points, nine rebounds and six assists in the opening night win over The Citadel, while following that up the next day with 11 points, five assists and three rebounds in the upset win over UNCG. In that SoCon quarterfinal win over UNCG, Yildizoglu also posted a crucial late-game block to help the Keydets preserve the 64-57 upset win over the No. 2 Spartans. Yildizoglu finished out his tournament in strong fashion by adding 12 points, four rebounds and two helpers in the 85-65 season-ending loss to Wofford.

The native of Istanbul, Turkey started 31 of 34 games, missing three games due to injury last season for the Keydets. He scored a career-high 23 points in a late-season SoCon home loss to Samford, while posting four steals on two occasions last season, which included an impressive 91-82 win over Furman. 

One area that Yildizoglu will hope to see much improvement in his overall game in the 2025-26 season is as a perimeter threat, as he finished the 2024-25 campaign connecting on just 24.8% (31-of-125). 

Another key cog returning to the backcourt for the Keydets in 2025-26 is also arguably the league's top returning on-ball defender, in rising 6-4 junior AJ Clark. The Suffolk, VA., native was a SoCon All-Defensive Team selection last season, as well as finishing the season ranking second in steals-per-game, averaging 1.9 SPG, while also ranking fifth overall in blocks-per-game average, posting 0.9 BPG in 2024-25. 

The third category in which Clark finished ranking in the Top 10 in the SoCon last season is field goal percentage, completing the 2024-25 campaign ranking 10th in that particular category, knocking down shots at a 54.9% clip. 

Clark enjoyed an outstanding performance in an early SoCon home loss to Mercer, recording a double-double of 12 points and 12 rebounds. He also posted a career-high five blocks in a late-season home loss to Samford. He posted five steals on two occasions last season, which came in an early February home loss to East Tennessee State and a Dec. 7 home loss to Queens.  

In addition to his defensive numbers, Clark added 4.9 PPG and 4.5 RPG, with 21 starts in 34 games. Clark had off-season foot surgery, however, should be 100% healthy when the 2025-26 season rolls around. 

Clark will again be a defensive enforcer for Wilson, and he might actually be the most valuable player returning for VMI for the upcoming campaign because of his ability on that end.  

Giving the backcourt even more of a boost this coming season will be the return of Linus Holmstrom, who returns to the fold after a strong first season in the Red and Gold for the Keydets. Holmstrom enjoyed his best game of the season against Regent, posting a season-high 17 points, and he was one of the better young perimeter shooters in the SoCon last season, posting a pair of games in which he connected on four three-pointers last season. 

Holmstrom was an effective outside threat throughout the season for the Keydets, finishing out the season by connecting on 33.5% (53-of-158) from long-range and he finished the season by making five starts and saw action all 35 games. Holmstrom hails from Stockholm, Sweden and will add vital depth at guard this coming season. 

The return of TJ Johnson is also vitally important to the potential success for the Keydets for the coming 2025-26 season. Johnson was one of the Keydets' most-effective three-point threats last season, and the rising junior from Belton, TX,, by way of Lipscomb finished out the season in ranking third in the SoCon in three-pointers made-per-game (2.8). 

Johnson's 32.6 minutes-per-game saw him fifth in the league in minutes-played-per-game, and he logged 33 starts in 35 games for VMI during the 2024-25 season. He finished with a career-high 23 points in VMI's early-season win over Christendom and tied his career-high with nine rebounds in VMI's SoCon Tournament win over The Citadel.  

In VMI's final game of the season against Wofford, Johnson was held to seven points to go with six rebounds. Johnson returns as VMI's second-leading scorer and was the team's third-leading scorer last season, averaging 12.3 PPG and 4.7 RPG, which also ranked third on the squad last season. 

Johnson finished the 2024-25 season sporting a 40.5% field goal percentage, while ranking second on the team behind only Rickey Bradley Jr. in three-point accuracy, as he connected on 36.5% from downtown, and his 93 triples (93-of-255) led the Keydets in 2024-25. In my opinion, Johnson provided the toughest matchup for the opposition to account for on the defensive end last season because of his versatility, as he was effective shooting the three, as well as possessing the ability to effectively to score from the mid-range, as well as low in the paint around the basket. 

Two key returnees that provided support as mostly reserves off the bench for head coach Andrew Wilson last season are both 6-8 forward Kaden Stuckey and 6-5 guard Jaylen Pazon.  

Both will be rising sophomores heading into the 2025-26 season. Stuckey saw action in all 34 games for VMI during his freshman season, logging a total of 13 starts and finished averaging 3.4 PPG and 2.5 RPG in 12.8 minutes-per-game during his rookie season.

Stuckey is a good athlete that will continue to make improvements to his game on the offensive end this season, and when he can stay out of foul trouble, is excellent on the defensive end of the floor. He finished his rookie season with 15 blocks and 10 steals.  

Offensively, he recorded his first-career double-double in a win over non-Division I Regent, posting 11 points and 10 boards, while posting a season and career-high 12 points in a late-November game against George Washington. He finished the season with a 53.1% field goal percentage, which ranked 12th overall in the SoCon.

Pazon saw action in 19 games during his rookie campaign, enjoying his best performance of the season in a lopsided loss at Chattanooga, which saw him post a career-high 15 points, while recording a season-high five rebounds in a 75-70 road win at SoCon rival The Citadel. He averaged 10.2 minutes-per-game last season, averaging 3.5 PPG and 1.5 RPG, while shooting 49% (24-of-49) from the field and 44.4% (8-of-18) from three-point range.

Robert Peters is a rising junior forward that saw action in 18 games, including making three starts and scored a career-high 12 points in an early-December non-conference loss to Queens. He had a career-high 12 rebounds in the previous game in what was a lopsided win over Virginia University Lynchburg. He will add depth in the paint in 2025-26. 

Rounding out the holdovers from last season are rising sophomore forward Cal Liston, who logged action in 23 games with one start, completing the season averaging 1.3 PPG and 1.9 RPG, while rising redshirt sophomore guard Walker Andrews returns after seeing his first action in a VMI uniform last season, logging action in 15 games with one start, which included posting a pair of 20-point scoring efforts for the Keydets in wins over non-Division I Virginia University Lynchburg and Christendom. Andrews also posted a season-high five three-pointers made in the win over VUL. He finished the season averaging 5.5 PPG and 0.5 RPG. 

In conclusion, Wilson managed the potential damage from the transfer portal in strong fashion, with the only real detrimental departure being Augustinas Kiudulas, who was VMI's second-leading scorer (15.2 PPG) and finished as the team's leading rebounder (6.3 RPG). 

Kiudulas was a SoCon All-Tournament selection and he finished the season with five double-doubles and started 29 games for VMI last season. The biggest impact felt will be rebounding even more than what he gave VMI as an offensive presence, as he ranked fifth in the league in offensive rebounds-per-game (2.4)

The only other players that will not return but did see action last season are sophomore guard Maurice Wright Jr. (3.4 PPG, 1.5 RPG) and 6-11 sophomore center Cyprian Hyde (1.8 PPG, 2.4 RPG), who spent just one season in Lexington and played in only 11 games. 

All told, despite all the chaos experienced by Wilson with injuries and early departures by players in his short, but stressful first couple of seasons in charge, things have settled down and that has allowed Wilson to actually establish an identity for his program and show the players that came in and believe that success was not only possible, but could be a reality in the immediate. 

He was able to lead VMI to at least 15 wins in a season for just the 12th time in program history. The 11-win improvement from 2023-24 to the 2024-25 season is the biggest turnaround in school history. That was good enough to keep most of the talent around for the future, and it should make VMI a preseason pick in the top half of the league come prediction time for the 2025-26 season.

So what did the Keydets bring in from the transfer portal during the offseason? One of the pickups appeared to have been 7-0 center Dhiakuei "DK" Manyiel Dut, however, six days after his verbal commitment he decided to transfer for to California. 

That gives VMI with one scholarship to work with the remainder of the off-season should they choose to use it. comes in as a bit of a project player but will give the Keydets size and athleticism to match, with the latter something they really haven't had much of in a big man under Wilson. Dut would have helped ease the loss of big man Cyprian Hyde, and perhaps a late summer addition in the middle is already in the works.  

Freshman Additions:

Head coach Andrew Wilson has added one player from via the high school ranks so far, as the Keydets welcomed in 6-2 guard Mario Tatum out of Edgewood, MD, and the newcomer will likely have an immediate chance to play his way onto the depth chart in the backcourt as a part of the rotation as soon as the 2025-26 season. 

Tatum prepped at Mt. Carmel High School and will come in as a point guard to VMI, looking to break into a lineup that will feature plenty of depth entering the 2024-25 season, led by both Tan Yildizoglu and Linus Holmstrom. 

Tatum played at Our Lady Mount Carmel HS in Baltimore MD, which is an excellent area to find basketball talent, and he faced off against programs like the famed DeMatha Catholic during his prep career. He is a shifty, athletic point guard that comes to VMI as a pure scorer and elite distributor of the basketball. He helped lead Our Lady of Mount Carmel to a 34-4 record during his senior season and a No. 2 ranking in the state. He rates as a three-star recruit by most recruiting services.

Early 2025-26 Outlook:

VMI and head coach Andrew Wilson haven't had all that much to do during the off-season, and that's a very good thing. For the first time since arriving in Lexington, Wilson hasn't had to scramble to find players to fill out a roster, and that's a great thing. 

The Keydets again won't feature a big rotation of players, with probably seven or eight being the limit, but it's something VMI has done a nice job of managing the past couple of seasons. The improvements made on the defensive end of the floor were most notable from the 2023-24 season to the 2024-25 campaign.

The Keydets were also a better perimeter shooting team last season than they had been before under Wilson, and that's thanks to bringing in an excellent shooter like TJ Johnson from the transfer portal. 

While the departure of Augustinas Kiudulas sees the front court take a bit of a hit, Johnson, Kaden Stuckey and even Cal Liston, who should see his minutes increase this season. During the remainder of the summer, I would look for Wilson and staff to maybe add one more big man, whether that be from the transfer portal or from the high school ranks, but it will most likely be from the portal.

As far as the backcourt is concerned, the Keydets are pretty much locked in for the upcoming season, with the only notable addition made at point guard, with the recruitment of talented freshman guard Mario Tatum into the fold out of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Baltimore. 

The Keydets will have two of the top guards in the SoCon entering the 2025-26 season, in assists machine Tan Yildizoglu, who is a key piece to the team's overall success, and his decision to return from the transfer portal brought about a collective sigh of relief in Lexington, and with him at the controls and one of the top scoring guards alongside him, in Rickey Bradley Jr., the Keydets will have one of the better one-two punches at guard in the SoCon in 2025-26. 

Linus Holmstrom will be ready to add depth in the backcourt, and he is again a player that offers experience at the international level, which helps offset his youth. He was a solid perimeter threat last season, but I look for him to be one VMI's most-reliable perimeter threats this season alongside TJ Johnson and could be the real breakout player for VMI this season.

Finally, there was one alteration to the coaching staff for VMI, with the addition of Nick Korta, who comes to VMI after one year as Director of Basketball Operations and will join a solid staff that includes associate head coach and offensive coordinator Xavier Silas, assistant coach and defensive coordinator Paul Harrison, and assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Austin Kenon. 

Korta replaces Perin Foote on the VMI staff and took a similar route as Foote did to Lexington, as he comes from Missouri and, where he was the director of basketball operations for the Tigers, but before that, similar to also similar Foote in coaching specialization, Korta served as the director of player development from 2021-23 at Bowling Green.  Foote moved on to Florida State, as he accepted a spot on Luke Loucks' new staff at Florida State as the Director of Basketball Operations.

Overall, the Keydets appear to be headed for a upper echelon finish an opening round bye for the 2026 Southern Conference Tournament, thanks in large part to being able to retain so much talent from last season's 15-win team and one that had that magical run in Asheville to the semifinals, which included an upset of No. 2 seed UNC Greensboro. 

Starters Lost: (1)--F--Augustinas Kiudulas (transferred to Colorado State)

Others Lost: (2)--C--Cyprian Hyde (entered transfer portal/not committed), G-Marcus Wright Jr. (entered the transfer portal/not committed)

Potential Breakout Player in 2025-26:  G-Linus Holmstrom

Best Transfer Portal Get: 

Best Freshman Addition: G-Mario Tatum

Overall Portal/Recruiting Synopsis and Grade: B+

Mercer rising sophomore wing Brady Shoulders vs. Jacksonville in Ft Myers Classic (Photo courtesy of Mercer athletics)

8. Mercer (14-19, 6-12/finished 8th in SoCon)--Ryan Ridder's first season in charge of the Mercer basketball program was filled with and ups and downs, and much like the routine for young head coaches taking over at a new place, Ridder had to come in and piece together a roster and try and convince as much talent as he could to stick around for at least one season before entering the transfer portal if they still wanted to transfer, and for the most part, Ridder excelled in being able to navigate both, as well as endure what was a topsy-turvy season, as the young, 40-year old head coach got his first taste of the competitive nature of SoCon basketball in 2024-25.

On some nights, Ridder's Bears looked like they could beat anyone in the league and looked like one of the teams that, if you didn't know better about the situation at hand, looked like a team that could compete for a SoCon regular-season and tournament title. 

However, there were other nights that were truly frustrating, and while the Bears were rarely blown out in league play last season, it was also apparent that this uber-talented roster lacked the kind of cohesiveness and belief to win games in the clutch, and that was particularly apparent in the SoCon Tournament when the Bears saw their season end with a 76-61 loss to top overall seed and regular-season league champion Chattanooga in what was the Bears' second game of the tournament. 

After knocking off Western Carolina, 67-66, in its opener in the 2025 tournament, the Bears would see a six-point, 34-28, halftime lead quickly disappear in the second half. It was a Chattanooga team that the Bears had defeated 99-94 in a thrilling overtime game to open Southern Conference play and then led the Mocs for most of the way before eventually seeing the wheels come off late in what was a 93-84 loss in early February at McKenzie Arena to the Mocs. 

Much of that inconsistency in close games late, and in conference play and in the conference tournament, the Bears were involved in nine games decided by five points or less, finishing 4-5 in those games. Part of the issue was while Ahmad Robinson was no doubt one of the hardest assignments for any opposing defender in the league, it's that his decision-making down the stretch in games was suspect. Sometimes brilliant, while at others he left much to be desired. 

Robinson has left the program, joining up with Andy Kennedy and the UAB Blazers at season's end, but as good of a scorer and distributor that the junior point guard could be, he could also be a big liability. His 131 turnovers last season were more than any player ranked in the top 350 in college basketball in assist/turnover ratio, with the next closest in terms of total turnovers being  Illinois guard Kasparas Jakucionis, who finished the season with 123 miscues.

All that to say is that it might not be such a bad thing that the Bears are starting anew at point guard for the 2025-26 season, and while scoring is always hard to replace, the headache of having to deal with some mind-numbing turnovers at times last season is something that Ryan Ridder and staff hopefully won't have to worry about this season.

Outside of Robinson, the Bears must also essentially replace the rest of the backcourt, with Cam Bryant, Tyler "Chip" Johnson, Jah Quinones, and Jah Nze have all either graduated or entered the transfer portal following the 2024-25 season. 

Chip Johnson, who is out of eligibility, was excellent in his one season with the Bears. He was not only a great leader, but his shooting ability was vital in several key wins for Mercer last season. Johnson was one of the best perimeter shooters in the Southern Conference last season and for Mercer, which wasn't a great perimeter shooting team last season, was easily its best shooter, finishing the season by connecting on 38.4% of his shots from downtown, as he connected on 93-of-242 from three-point range and finished as the Bears' second-leading scorer last season at 15.7 PPG. 

The lone returnee back for Ridder in the backcourt heading into the 2025-26 season is Brady Shoulders, who was solid in his first season of action as a college basketball player. The 6-6 guard from Eddyville, KY., averaged 5.8 PPG, 5.9 RPG and 1.2 APG last season for Mercer. He also finished the season with a 42.1% field goal percentage (69-of-164) and was a 33.3% () shooter from long-range. 

Shouders had several big games for the Bears last season, including finding his way into double figures on eight occasions last season, including posting a career-high 14 points on two occasions, which came in a loss at Chattanooga, as well as a in a narrow 75-72 loss to Miami of Ohio in the Fort Myers Classic, as he played 29 minutes and connected on 5-of-10 shots from the field, including going 3-for-8 from three-point range in the loss.

Shoulders is not only the leading returning scorer for the Bears entering the upcoming season, but also will be a key piece that could potentially have a breakout season for the Bears in 2025-26 campaign. I look for him to be a much-improved three-point threat, as well as more aggressive as a scorer overall. 

One of Shoulders' more memorable performances of the season came the game before scoring his career-high of 14 points for the first time of two times of the season against Miami (OH), as he was instrumental in helping the Bears reach the championship game of the Fort Myers Classic against the Redhawks, as his three-pointer with five seconds remaining helped the Bears force overtime against Jacksonville. Mercer would use the momentum established from Shoulders' key triple to come away with a 90-89 overtime win. 

All told, Shoulders finished the 2024-25 season by starting 24 of 33 games for the Bears, averaging 25.2 MPG. Shoulders is joined by Braeden Carlsen as the only other returnee in the backcourt heading into the upcoming season.  Carlsen, a 6-4 shooting guard from Wauconda, Ill, redshirted the 2024-25 season. 

In the front court, the Bears got some strong play from Alex Holt in the paint over the past couple of seasons after he transferred in from High Point prior to the 2023-24 season as a grad transfer with two years of eligibility. Holt easily had his best season in 2024-25 with the Bears, contributing 11.2 PPG and a team-leading 6.8 RPG. He also ranked fifth overall in the SoCon and led the team in field goal percentage, connecting at a 58.3% clip for the season.  

In addition to Holt in the front court, Ridder must find replacements for Angel Montas Jr and Marcus Overstreet, who must also be replaced.

Like the backcourt, there isn't much in terms of production returning, however, the cupboard is not completely bare, with 6-8 small forward Petras Padegimas and walk on center Alex Koch highlight the lone returnees in the front court for the Bears entering the 2025-26 season. 

The one major holdover that has put in his time and work in extensive fashion with the Mercer basketball program is TJ Grant, and the 6-5 forward from nearby Warner Robins, GA., logged action in 13 games off the bench last season, averaging 11.9 minutes-per-game in those games in which he saw time. He scored a career-high 13 points in the lopsided season-opening win over VU-Lynchburg, while leading the Bears with 13 rebounds in a loss at South Carolina. 

All told, heading into his second season as the head coach of Mercer, Ridder will need to replace seven of the top eight scorers from last season and 71.9 PPG of its 76.1 of scoring from a year ago. 

Attacking the portal would be much the same for Ridder as it was when he took over, which is basically he came in last season needing immediate help from the transfer portal, and building depth as well as for the future would involve getting into homes and being a salesman to mom and dad for the Mercer basketball program to talented, overlooked talent from the high school ranks. I call it old school recruiting, as it seems at the power conference level at least, recruiting high school talent seems to be all of the sudden an outdated form of recruiting. 

With that said, Mercer fans can rest easy in the knowledge that, Ridder is one of the best recruiters of any coach in the Southern Conference, and that not only goes for high school recruits, but also from the portal. It would be hard to argue the talent that Ridder brought in from the portal in his first season as Macon as Mercer's head basketball coach.

There are several areas that Ridder will also hope to improve in addition to first of all just replacing the sheer amount of scoring and depth lost from a year ago, which is almost an entire roster's worth of players.  It will be interesting to see how the Bears make adjustments under Ridder in 2025-26, and two areas the Bears must improve next season are overall on the defensive end of the floor, ranking 273 out of 354 nationally in scoring defense (75.3 PPG) and guarding the three-point line, ranking 236^th nationally in three-point field goal percentage defense (34.7%). Both paled in comparison, though, from Mercer’s struggles from the charity stripe last season, as the Bears finished ranking 348 of 355 nationally in free throw shooting (65.3%).

In the backcourt, Ridder has secured the commitment of several players that should make an impact immediately having hit both the JUCO ranks, which he knows best, as well as bringing in talent from both the power 6 and mid-major levels. 

So far, Ridder has a total of 10 commitments, which includes eight from the portal or JUCO ranks, while the Bears picked a pair of commitments from the high school ranks and are not as of yet when it comes to filling out a roster. 

One of the obvious areas of major concern heading into the portal season for Ryan Ridder and staff was the point guard spot, where the Bears must replace both Ahmad Robinson and Jah Quinones have moved on. One of the unique gets is Kyle Cuff Jr., which has the ability to play multiple spots in the backcourt for the Bears.

Ridder, who is one of the best recruiters among the SoCon's head coaches, brought in a player that can make a difference right away, which is much the same the case as it was last season with Robinson. 

One of the best "gets" in the transfer is combo guard Kyle Cuff Jr., who comes to Macon from Syracuse. Cuffe Jr. comes to Mercer with one year of eligibility remaining, and Mercer will be the third school in which he will be attending, as he started his career playing for Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks. He transferred to Syracuse after spending his freshman and redshirt freshman seasons in Lawrence. 

He spent his next two seasons at Syracuse and is coming off a 2024-25 season, which saw him log action in 30 games for the averaging 12.4 MPG. He finished his final season with the Orange averaging 5.1 PPG and 1.1 RPG, while posting 16 assists and turning it over 25 times. He also contributed 13 steals on the defensive end of the floor. 

In Syracuse's ACC home opener against Wake Forest, Cuffe Jr. posted 14 points and had six boards, which marked his career-best performance. Cuffe Jr. is versatile and can play either the point or off-guard spots, with a his excellent on-ball defense being a notable attribute for the incoming ACC talent. 

Cuffe Jr. isn't the only player with a background that features high-level basketball, however, as 6-3 Baraka Okojie comes to Mercer from Memphis where he spent the 2024-25 season after spending his freshman campaign at George Mason. He will also be in the mix to challenge for the starting point guard spot, which has been vacated by Robinson.

During the 2024-25 season, Okojie didn't see the floor for the Tigers, however, as a freshman in 2023-24 at George Mason, Okojie turned more than a few heads during his time with the Patriots. He saw action in all 32 games with the Green and Gold, garnering All Atlantic 10 Rookie Team accolades after posting 8.1 PPG, 2.9 RPG and 2.7 APG in his first season of college basketball. 

He finished his freshman campaign in 2023-24 ranking ninth overall in the A-10 in steals-per-game (1.4 SPG), showing his tenacity and grit on the defensive end of the floor, which is an area that head coach Ryan Ridder stressed had to be better on more than one occasion during his first season as the Bears' head coach, and that was defending out of the guard spots.

In terms of being an offensive threat, he scored in double figures in nine games in 2023-24, which included posting a career-high 22 points, six rebounds, and three assists in the regular-season finale of his freshman campaign against Saint Joseph's.

It would appear that, at least on the surface, Okojie is ready to come in and make an impact from the outset of his career in the Orange and Black.

Quinton Perkins II will also be in the mix at point guard this coming season, as he joins the Mercer program from the JUCO ranks, as he comes out of one of the most prestigious JUCO programs in the country, in Indian Hills CC in Ottumwa, IA. It's also the program that produced former Chattanooga Mocs legend and future NBA Lottery Draft pick, Johnny Taylor, way back in 1996. 

Perkins II is a 6-1, 180-lb, rising redshirt sophomore that will have three years of eligibility remaining. Prior to going to Indian Hills CC, Perkins II spent one season at Tarleton State, where he did not log any action. In his only season at Indian Hills, the native of Dallas, TX, was an All Region II Second-Team selection after seeing action in 31 of 32 games on the season, making a total of six starts and averaged 21. 5 minutes-per-game.

Additionally, the redshirt freshman guard finished his first season of college basketball posting 8.0 PPG and shooting an impressive 51.5% (86-of-167) from the floor, which included an even more impressive 48.4% (44-of-91) from three-point range. 

Perkins II finished out his only season at Indian Hills CC by posting double figures in eight games, with five of those resulting in 20+point performances. He posted a career-high 24 points on 9-of-12 shooting from the field and 5-for-6 from three-point land, as he helped lead Indian Hills to a resounding 85-54 win in the process. 

One of the prime contenders to make an impact at off-guard and is expected to compete for a starting job at shooting guard is 6-4 Zaire Williams, who came to Mercer as a graduate transfer from Wagner back on April 1. 

The 6-4, 200-lb native of Brooklyn, N.Y., saw action in 26 games in the 2024-25 season for the Seahawks, which included making 24 starts. He finished the season averaging a solid 12.1 PPG, 4.0 RPG and dished out 1.9 APG in helping the Seahawks to a 14-16 record and a 6-10 finish in the NEC last season, averaging 30.7 minutes-per-game, which ranked 10th in the league. 

In his final season with the Seahawks, Williams would should 38.8% (108-of-278) from the floor and 34.2% (51-of-149) from beyond the three-point line. His 12.1 PPG scoring average was good enough to rank 14th overall in NEC in scoring, while his 1.8 steals-per-game ranked him second in the league. He was a Third-Team All-NEC selection in his final campaign at Wagner. 

In his career at Wagner, he started 68 of the 87 total games he played in, averaging 25.4 MPG, averaging 8.3 PPG, 1.3 APG, 2.7 RPG and registered an impressive 120 steals across four seasons playing a prominent role for the Seahawks.

Rounding out the guard spots from the portal is Tristan Gross, who makes his way to Macon from Stetson where he spent his first two seasons of his collegiate career. 

Gross, a 6-6 wing, who is athletic and rangy, will be a player that figures into mix much like Cam Bryant did in his one season for the Bears, only Gross will have two years of eligibility remaining. During the 2023-24 season with the Hatters, Gross saw action in all 35 games, which included making 14 starts. During his freshman campaign back in 2023-24, he was a part of Stetson history, as he was part of the first and only team in program history to ever make it to the NCAA Tournament.

In 2024-25, the athletic wing ended his campaign averaging 4.0 PPG and 1.9 RPG across 19.6 MPG of floor action. He is a pretty solid threat from the perimeter as well, connecting on 36.4% (56-of-154) from long-range in two seasons with the Hatters. 

A total of three post players were brought in by Ridder, starting with a big one...literally, in 6-10, 220-lb center Armanii Mighty, who comes to middle Georgia after spending two seasons at Boston College and one at Central Michigan. His most recent campaign was spent in Muskegon, MI, for the Chippewas, however, did not see any action for CMU, earning a medical redshirt. 

He will have two years of eligibility remaining when he arrives at Mercer. As a sophomore at BC in the 2023-24 season, Mighty saw time in 35 games, averaging 5.6 MPG, while posting 0.8 PPG and 1.2 RPG. He shot 41% (9-of-22) on the season, while grabbing 19 offensive rebounds and blocking nine shots. 

As a true freshman at BC, he saw limited action in 16 contests, averaging 0.7 PPG and 0.9 RPG. He has the potential to add not only size and athleticism in the paint for the Bears, which is something that, outside of Holt and Overstreet, the Bears didn't really have all that much of in Ridder's first season. 

More importantly perhaps is the fact that Mighty has a chance to give the Bears a legitimate rim-protector in the paint for the next two seasons. On the offensive side of things, however, Mighty appears to be a bit of a liability. 

Forwards Bendji Pierre (San Diego) and Connor Serven (Virginia Tech) round out the recruiting haul for the Bears from the portal, as both will enter the Bears program with one year of eligibility remaining. Pierre, a 6-8, 230-lb power forward comes on board after having spent the past three seasons at San Diego, playing only of those three seasons, as he was sidelined with an injury for a majority of his time there. In fact, he sat out the entire 2023-24 season and only played 15 games in his first season with the Torreros.

The 2024-25 season definitely turned out to be his most productive, finishing out the season by averaging 5.1 PPG and 2.7 RPG, making 11 starts in 29 overall appearances. He averaged 18.9 minutes-per-game for the Torreros last season, with 31 of his 50 field goals for the season coming from beyond the arch. He wasn't terribly efficient in shooting from long range, however, as he connected at just a 25.4% (31-of-122) from long-range. 

Serven is a 6-8, 225-lb transfer from Virginia Tech, who has also spent time at both Eastern Michigan (2023-24) and Illinois (2020-23) before detouring to Mercer for his final season of NCAA Division I college basketball. 

As a Hokie last season, Serven finished by seeing action only 16 games and totaled just 38 minutes of floor time for the season. He enjoyed his most productive season at EMU, as he averaged 3.3 PPG and 3.1 RPG, and played in 31 games, including 13 starts for the Eagles. He scored a career-high 15 points on a 5-for-10 shooting performance in a 71-69 overtime win vs. Kent State. His most productive performance last season with the Hokies came against North Carolina, knocking down 2-of-3 shots from the field in a 91-59 setback in Blacksburg.

Freshman Additions:

Head coach Ryan Ridder has signed only two freshman performers thus far, with Ridder signing both a combo guard, in Jaydon Cole, as well as a small forward in Njoroge Nganga.

Cole, a 6-3 point guard out of Milton, GA, by way of Milton High School where he established himself as a three-star recruit coming out of high school according to 247Sports. Cole is versatile in that he can play either the point or off-guard spot,  and he chose to attend Mercer back in late April, announcing his future college plans and intent to attend Mercer for the 2025-26 season via social media.

Cole chose to attend Mercer over some other solid NCAA Division I offers from both Old Dominion and Radford. He started his prep career at King's Ridge Christian High School where he led the Tigers to the state championship as a sophomore, averaging 9.3 PPG, 2.6 RPG and 3.2 APG. 

He would see his numbers take off in his junior campaign, as Cole nearly doubled his scoring average to post 17.9 PPG, however, despite seeing his Indvidual numbers increase, he was not able to lead his school back to such lofty places in his junior season, as King's Ridge would miss the state playoffs, finishing 16-8.

Cole played his senior season at Milton High School, finishing his career by garnering All-Region First Team honors, and just before the calendar turned from 2024 to '25, surpassed 1,000 points for his career. 

One of the things that Cole so enticing to Ridder and staff during the recruiting process was his shooting ability, possessing what is seemingly limitless range.

Njoroge Nganga rounds out the additions for the Bears as far as freshman signees are concerned. The wing originally committed to Nicholls State out of high school, however, since has flipped his commitment to Mercer. The wing guard will give Mercer some added athleticism on the wing, as well as being an above average shooter from long range.

Finally, 6-4 Braden Carlsen could figure into the backcourt plans in 2025-26. He redshirted his first season with the Bears after coming to Mercer from Wauconda, Ill. 

Early 2025-26 Outlook:

As good as Mercer's prospects looked for a rebuild in Ryan Ridder's first season as the head coach of the Bears, they might look even better this time around, as the Bears should not only be competitive with this latest recruiting haul, but should be able to compete for a top six finish in the league from the outset of the season.

The scoring production from the additions made look to be more widespread, which is unlike last season, which saw a large bulk of it between Ahmad Robinson and Tyler "Chip" Johnson alone. That is certainly not the case with this latest recruiting haul from the transfer portal.

The other thing I look for that will be a surprise for some this coming season will be the improvement of a guy like Brady Shoulders. I think the 2025-26 season will be a year in which he is able to take his game to an even higher level and become even more of a scoring threat, as he has good mid-range capabilities, and if he can bring improvement to his perimeter jumper over the off-season, I think Shoulders has the potential to have a Marcus Kell type of breakout season for the Bears in the upcoming campaign.

Finally, one of the huge additions made during the off-season also came on the sidelines for the Bears, as former legendary guard Langston Hall joined the coaching staff in mid-June. Hall is one of the most-decorated hoopers in Mercer basketball history, and was a member of the Bears' last team in the Atlantic Sun, and was also a big part of helping the Bears knock off No. 6 Duke in a historic upset in the 2014 NCAA Tournament.

He finished his Bears career with 1,579 career points and was a three-time All-Atlantic Sun selection. Hall also finished his career as Mercer's all-time career assists leader, having dished out 633 helpers over the course of his Bears career. 

As a part of that 2013-14 that canceled Duke's March Madness plans beyond Raleigh, N.C., he led Mercer by averaging 14.6 PPG, 5.6 APG and 3.1 RPG and was the named the NABC Lou Henson Mid-Major Player of the Year. His No. 21 jersey currently hangs in the rafters at Hawkins Arena. 

While I won't guarantee Mercer to make a top four or five finish in the league this coming season, I am only stopping just short of saying that. When we mention Mercer this time next year and the job Ridder has done, it will be in the same breath as being the most improved team in the SoCon and a program that is on the upswing.

Starters Lost: (5)--F/C--Alex Holt (out of eligibility), G--Ahmad Robinson (transferred to UAB), G--Tyler "Chip" Johnson (out of eligibility), WG--Cam Bryant (out of eligibility), G--Laurynas Vaistraras (out of eligbility)

Others Lost: (5)--G--Jah Nze (entered transfer portal/unsigned), G/F-Angel Montas Jr (transferred to UMass-Lowell), F--Marcus Overstreet (transferred to San Jose State), G-Jah Quinones (entered the transfer portal in late spring/unsigned)

Potential Breakout Player in 2025-26:  G/F--Brady Shoulders

Best Transfer Portal Get:  G-Baraka Okojie or G-Kyle Cuffe Jr.

Best Freshman Addition: G-Jaydon Cole

Overall Portal/Recruiting Synopsis and Grade: A

WCU forward Marcus Kell (photo courtesy of WCU athletics)

9. Western Carolina (8-22, 4-14/9th in SoCon)--Like Ryan Ridder, Western Carolina's Tim Craft spent most of his first season on the job in a new conference, collecting both fileable information to carry over to the off-season about the new league he was coaching in, as well as more than a few grey hairs in the process. 

Ridder and Craft both inherited similar situations upon arrival at their respective programs, and it wouldn't be so surprising, then, when the two were on a collision course to meet in the Southern Conference Tournament in Asheville in the 8-9 game to open the tournament. 

The Catamounts, like the Bears, didn't have all that much talent already on board when Craft took over, however, there were two key pieces to build with, with the return of senior Bernard Pelote and emerging talent Marcus Kell, who were a couple of the holdovers from the Justin Gray era. 

With that said, there was also a lot of building to do, and just like Ridder, Craft came into his new post as Catamounts head coach and hit the ground and the portal running so-to-speak. He would end up bringing in some reputable talent from the transfer portal and freshman talents as well, with guys like Chevalier "Ice" Emery (UW Green Bay), Chase McKey (Marshall), CJ Hyland (true freshman), Brandon White (Texas A&M), Jamar Livingston (Walters State), Vernon Collins (Princeton), Brandon Morgan (Caldwell CC),  Cord Stansberry (Pepperdine) and Fischer Brown (true freshman) just to name a few. 

But while Mercer had the point guard spot seemingly all figured out with both Ahmad Robinson and backup Jah Quinones, the Catamounts and coach Craft spent a large majority of the 2024-25 season not only trying to figure that position out, but also to stay healthy. 

It was the one position that made the difference in the opening game of the 2025 SoCon Tournament at the Harrah's Cherokee Center, with the Bears' Robinson making the most of an opportunity from the same spot that the Catamounts had a chance to respond, but squandered, with the Catamounts squandering their chance when Ice Emery's shot, despite being wide open, was well off the mark. Robinson supplied the game-winning assist to teammate and roommate Alex Holt on the previous trip down the floor to ultimately provide what would prove to be the game-winning points in a 67-66 loss. 

Since that fateful play, which continued one season one more day and ended the other right then and there, both Robinson and Emery have moved on. In fact Emery, CJ Hyland and Brandon Morgan were capable of running the point last season for the Catamounts, and with both Morgan and Emery having since moved on, it will allow for a player like Hyland, who struggled with some injury issues last season, progress further along as one of the league's up-and-coming court generals. 

Something that plagued both Mercer and Western Carolina throughout the 2024-25 season was taking effective care of the basketball. Both teams finished in the top four in the league in total turnovers last season, with the Catamounts ranking second with 420 miscues, while the Bears were fourth in the same category, posting 398 giveaways.

With that said, Hyland is part of a strong core group that has decided to return to Cullowhee for year two of the Tim Craft experience. Returning to the fold for the Catamounts for the 2025-26 season are as follows: F-Marcus Kell, F-Vernon Collins, G-Fischer Brown, G-Cord Stansberry, F-Chase McKey, G-CJ Hyland, G-Jamar Livingston, G-Drew Hollifield, and G-Max Williams.

The players deciding to enter the transfer portal and move on from the program are as follows: G-Chevalier "Ice" Emery, G-Brandon Morgan, C-Brandon White, F-Cinque Lemon, G-Kamari Jones, and G-Carson Brown. Lost to graduation and eligibility is Bernard Pelote, which gives the Catamounts a healthy amount of both production and plenty of momentum moving forward.

One of the most deceiving things about Western Carolina from the 2024-25 season is the Catamounts record, as the Purple and Gold won only eight total games, including just four in league play. Judging WCU just based solely upon their wins and losses last season would be your first mistake, however, as there was real progress made in real time that could be seen from how they started league play to how they finished it up. 

One of the more striking things about the Catamounts was how they looked so different as they began to blend offensively under Craft in the middle of February, as comparted to the very start of SoCon play way back in early January. Craft's offensive system is based on spacing to free up shooters, and for Craft, that means shooting a lot of threes and making them at a high efficiency rate, which is something that made him such a well-respected head coach during his 12 seasons spent as the head coach of Gardner-Webb.

One thing is for sure, after spending a lot of the early conference portion of the slate trying to find positives from blowout losses to the likes of Furman, Samford, East Tennessee State and UNC Greensboro during the opening month of league play, keeping his team's head in to coming to work everyday and putting in the work to get better couldn't have been easy. 

Gradually though, as the calendar flipped from January to February, something strange happened, and that is to say, the Catamounts started to find some success. Jan. 12 home win in overtime over Mercer in overtime was the first stepping stone, and perhaps the moment when things came all the way full circle for Craft and the Catamounts came against a really good East Tennessee State team. 

The Catamounts had suffered a 27-point, 85-58, loss to the Bucs on Jan. 22 in Johnson City. Three weeks later at the Ramsey Center, the Catamounts showed how far they had come, with a 76-67 win over the Bucs. Though ETSU was playing without one of its star players, in Jaden Seymour, the Catamounts still showed the type of improvement that was evident they were receiving the coaching messages clearly and the hard work was paying off, but not all at once. 

Building takes time and though it can happen quicker in this day and age with the portal's influence on college basketball being so profound, the fact remains that building how you want to build isn't easy at all.

However, if Western Carolina's improvement alone could be personified in just one player alone, it would no doubt be the improvements made for all to see in-season in a guy like forward Marcus Kell.  The improvements made by a player like Kell in-season were nothing short of remarkable, and a testament to Craft and his staff to bring him along and his hard work paying off only filtered down to the rest of the team. It was the kind of osmosis that worked on its own and didn't have to be coach, but in the end Craft can take some of that credit, too, even if he was solely responsible for all of it.

Entering the 2024-25 season, Marcus Kell wasn't a player that most prognosticating this league had on their bingo card for "breakout player", however, that is precisely what would happen. Now entering his redshirt junior season, Kell ended up seeing action in 30 games for WCU last season, which included making 16 total starts. 

He finished the season averaging 11.7 PPG and 5.5 RPG, while connecting on a solid 38.0% (44-of-116) from three-point, which would ultimately make Kell one of the most versatile big men in the SoCon by the end of the season, and one that has many prognosticating big things for him moving forward this season. 

All told, Kell's 352 points scored during the 2024-25 campaign ranked second to only that of senior forward Bernard Pelote, who finished out his final season in the Purple and Gold averaging 14.2 PPG and scored a total of 426 points. His 44 triples also ranked him fourth on the team in that category, while his 38% efficiency clip from long-range led the team.

The game that would seemingly turn around Kell's season and put his confidence at peak level for the remainder of the season came in what was an 84-75 overtime loss at Furman. Kell entered early February contest at Furman, which saw the game played at nearby Bob Jones University with the Paladins' homecourt undergoing a 40-million dollar upgrade, coming off of three-straight double-figure scoring performances. 

It had started quietly enough, with Kell posting 16 points in an overtime win at The Citadel, which was followed by a 15-point effort in another one of those blowout home losses--an 84-60 setback to eventual league champion Chattanooga. Then came a modest 11-point effort in what was an 80-76 home overtime loss to VMI.

Then came the Furman game, which saw Kell make nearly everything he threw up in in the first half at Bob Jones' Davis Field House. Kell finished the night with 29 points in a season-high 38 minutes of action, connecting on 8-of-17 shots from the field and 5-of-9 shots from long range and was 8-for-9 from the charity stripe. 

He almost single-handedly not only kept WCU in the game, but had them leading the game for a large majority of the night. Additionally,  Kell added eight rebounds, two blocks and a steal. He had easily eclipsed his previous career high of 16 points by almost doubling that point total against the Paladins. 

That would set off quite a couple of weeks of basketball for the Fort Mill, S.C., native, as he posted double-figure performances in a total of 16 games in the 2024-25 campaign, including each of the final 12 games of the season. He would garner back-to-back SoCon Player of the Week citations, and two weeks after his 29-point loss in a road loss at Furman, posted a new career-high of 31 points in WCU's hard-fought, 81-76, road setback at eventual league champion Chattanooga.  

Kell will no doubt head into the 2025-26 as a preseason all-league selection and will be one of the handful of candidates returning that should be mentioned as a potential preseason league player of the year. 

Teaming with him in the paint this season as returnees will be both Vernon Collins and Chase McKey, who were both solid in their first respective campaigns suiting up for the Purple and Gold. Collins finished out the season by logging action in 30 games for WCU, which included making 24 starts. Collins concluded his first season in Cullowhee by averaging 4.7 PPG and connecting on a team-high 51% (53-of-104) from the field last season. 

He posted four double-figure scoring performances during his first season with the Purple and Gold, and that included a career-high 12 points against Queens University in a road setback. Collins enjoyed his best outing of Southern Conference play against eventual league champion Wofford, as he posted 11 points in a home start and loss to the Terriers. Collins is once again expected to play a significant role for the Catamounts on the front line this season. The 6-10 Collins looks like he will hold down the spot at the No. 5 position at least for now. 

Like Collins, Chase McKey was in his first season in the program, and the 6-10 transfer from Marshall logged action in a total of 24 contests in the 2024-25 season, which included making four starts in his inaugural campaign in Cullowhee. McKey, who plays the four position, finished the 2024-25 season averaging 4.0 PPG and 3.8 RPG, averaging 16.5 minutes-per-game.

Collins found his way in double figures on a couple of occasions for the Catamounts during the 2024-25 season, which included posting a career-high 13 points in his debut for WCU against Bob Jones.  He finished the season shooting a solid 50.5% (46-of-91) from the field and was a 72.4% (21-of-29) from the charity stripe. 

While Kell, Collins and McKey all return in the front court for the Catamounts for a second season under Tim Craft, the backcourt will see the return of CJ Hyland, Cord Stansberry and Fischer Brown, are back as the players who will eat up a majority of those returning minutes, while Max Williams, Jamar Livingston, and Drew Hollifield will also hope to compete for time in the backcourt this coming season.

In Hyland, Craft has a point guard willing to do the work and continued to show improvement as the season proceeded last season until hit by a nagging injury. The 6-1, 175-lb guard from Loganville, GA., ended up finishing out the season with 20 starts in 27 games for the Catamounts in 2024-25, and he would complete the campaign averaging 4.7 PPG, 2.0 RPG and 2.0 APG.  

He recorded a total of 54 assists and had 37 turnovers, ranking third on the team in total assists handed out last season. Hyland finished out the season averaging 21.0 minutes-per-game and was one of six Catamounts that averaged 20 or more minutes per outing last season. 

Additionally, Hyland will look for improvement as a perimeter threat from year one into year two with WCU, as he was able to connect at just a 23.4% (15-of-64) clip from long range in his rookie season with the Catamounts. Hyland is Craft's point guard moving forward, which became even more apparent with Ice Emery's departure after spending just one season in Cullowhee.

Stansberry enters his redshirt junior campaign looking to build off a campaign that saw him rank as WCU's primary third scoring option last season after averaging 11.2 PPG and 3.8 RPG in his first season with the Catamounts after transferring in from Pepperdine. 

Stansberry has sort of a throwback type game--an old-school shooting guard--that used to be so prevalent in this league, which was prevalent throughout the 1980s and 90s in the SoCon. Guys like Brandon Born (Chattanooga/1991-95) and former Appalachian State guard Tige Darner (1996-2000) both come to mind when thinking back to players comparable to Stansberry.

The native of Bermuda Dunes, CA., showed he was well equipped on the offensive end fot the Purple and Gold in his first season on campus, as he finished the season with a total of 19 different double-figure scoring games, which included displaying a good acumen from three-point range, finishing second on the team in total threes made (52) and shot them at a 31.7% (52-of-164) in his first season at WCU. 

While Stansberry was a solid offensive threat, his physical play on the defensive end of the floor, which is aligned with many of those two guards from a foregone era mentioned above, was what allowed him to lead the team in minutes-played-per-game average (29.8 MPG).

Of his 19 double-figure scoring efforts from last season, none were better than his effort against Bellarmine in what was a Catamount win, as he posted a career-best 24 points on 8-for-15 shooting from the field and 4-for-8 from three-point land in the game. Stansberry would also finish the contest by going a perfect 4-of-4 from the charity stripe. He also added six rebounds, four assists and one steal to round out a complete, well-rounded effort. His 24 points in the win over Bellarmine marked one of two games in which he scored 20 or more points last season, with the other coming in a loss at Wake Forest, as Stansberry finished that came with 20.

One of the aspects of Stansberry's game that I think you will see immediate progress in the upcoming season is his shooting ability from long range, which was in the neighborhood of 32% this past season. I'd be shocked if his redshirt junior season didn't see Stansberry shoot at a 35% clip or higher from long range.

Fischer Brown rounds out the guards returning that saw significant time in the lineup for Craft in his first season as the head coach in Cullowhee. Brown, who is a 6-4, 180-lb rising sophomore from Lewiston, MT, was arguably the team's best perimeter shooter from the time he stepped foot on campus for his true freshman season in Cullowhee. 

However, that didn't necessarily show up statistically, as Brown struggled to adjust to the speed of the game and like any young shooter, at times struggled with his confidence. I look for that to change drastically in year two, however, under Craft's tutelage and his staff's ability to further enhance his shot mechanics during the off-season. Year one for Brown saw him connect on just 25.7% (18-of-70) from long-range.

Brown would see action in 29 of 30 games for WCU in his first season, averaging 2.9 PPG and 2.1 RPG in an average of 12 minutes-per-game off the bench for WCU last season. He finished with nine games in which he scored five or more points in a game last season, scoring a career-high nine points in a Catamount win in his debut against Bob Jones. On the defensive end of the floor, Brown finished the season with 11 steals. 

The final player in the backcourt that could have a chance to crack the rotation in his second season at WCU is 6-3 rising redshirt sophomore Jamar Livingston, who saw time in a total of 11 games, including making a pair of starts. He would start the first two games of the season against Bob Jones and Queens, finishing the campaign averaging 4.2 PPG and 1.8 RPG in limited action. He finished the season averaging 14.3 minutes per game in those 11 contests last season. The Johnson City, TN., product, who played his prep basketball at Daniel Boone HS, finished out the season with his top performance coming in a Catamount win over Truett McConnell, as he contributed 13 points off the bench.

So what happens now? How did head coach Tim Craft address the departures going forward into the 2025-26 season? Well, the Catamounts will welcome in six new additions to the fold for the 2025-26 season, with four of those additions coming from the transfer portal, while the other two will be true freshmen additions for the upcoming campaign.

The Catamounts added shooting guard Tidjiane Dioumassi (Southern), point guard Julien Soumaoro (East Carolina/Gardner-Webb), wing guard Justin Johnson (Arkansas State) and center Abdulai Fanta Kabba (University of Denver) to account for the four additions made from the transfer portal. 

Dioumassi is a 6-4, 200-lb, graduate transfer that started his college journey at Lee College in Tennessee and for the last couple of seasons, the wing guard has spent his time playing at the NCAA Division I level at Southern.

He was a highly-productive player during his time with the Jaguars and ended up being an impact player for Southern in the SWAC. In his first season with the Jags, he helped Southern claim the 2023-24 regular-season conference title and finishing the season averaging 9.3 PPG. A native of Paris, France, Dioumassi brings a high skill level to the Catamount backcourt along with being a hard worker. He has particularly shown the ability to be an elite passer during his two seasons at Southern, dishing out 209 assists, with 169 assists coming in his first season in the program.

Dioumassi saw action in 40 games over two seasons at Southern, logging more limited action last season. The 2023-24 season would see Dioumassi garner second-team All-SWAC honors and he had 21 double-figure scoring performances in those 40 games at Southern over a two-year span. 

He posted a career-high 30 points in the 2024-25 season opener for the Jaguars against North Dakota. Prior to his time at Southern, Dioumassi spent time at Lee College in Baytown, TX, averaging 10.3 PPG, 5.0 APG and 3.8 RPG. 

A player with Dioumassi's skillset as an elite ball-handler, could even see him log some time at the point guard spot if the Catamounts want to go a bit bigger and create some matchup problems at the point guard spot.  Dioumassi will have one year of eligibility remaining with the Catamounts.

Like Dioumassi, 5-11 point guard Julien Soumaoro figures to be an impact player for the Catamounts as soon as he arrives on campus. A native the Bronx, N.Y., Soumaoro has spent the past three years playing at both Gardner-Webb and East Carolina, and is a player that Craft knows especially well, as he coached him during his time as a Bulldog. 

Soumaoro's 2024-25 campaign was not all that unlike Dioumassi's, in that he didn't see much court time, as he logged time in only eight games during his time in Greenville last season. He played his final game of the 2024-25 season on Dec. 11, finishing his limited campaign with the Pirates averaging 4.0 PPG. 

While Western Carolina was a solid team from the charity stripe last season, ranking third in the league in free throw shooting, posting an impressive collective 74.6% from the free throw line last season, Soumaoro posted an impressive 79.2% at the charity stripe during his time with the Bulldogs. 

In his three years at Gardner-Webb, however, it was a much different story, as Soumaoro saw action in 92 games over three seasons, posting a total of 768 points, 179 rebounds and 179 assists. He started 29 of 31 games in his

Soumaoro was also a solid threat from the perimeter in his time with the Bulldogs, as he finished out his final campaign with the Runnin' Bulldogs having connected on a three-pointer in a total of 24 of 30 games in the 2023-24 season, while also averaging 12.7 PPG, which also included 21 double-figure scoring performances in his final season in the program. 

Of those 21 games in double figures, none were better than his performance against Big Sky member Weber State, as he posted a career-high 27 points, which included a 10-of-13 effort from the field and a 5-for-7 mark from three-point land in the Gardner-Webb win. In the 2022-23 season at Gardner-Webb, Soumaoro's 55 triples ended up leading the team.  Soumaoro, like Dioumassi, will have one season of eligibility remaining. 

Rounding out the backcourt additions slated to come into the fold for the Catamounts this fall is Justin Johnson, who transferred into Western Carolina from Arkansas State where he spent his freshman season and will have three years of eligibility remaining. 

Johnson was part of the Red Wolves' 2024-25 regular-season championship winning team, as he would see action in a total of 17 games in in a limited reserve role. Johnson finished with his best performance in a win over Lane College, netting a career-high 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting from the field, while also posting eight boards and dished out five helpers. 

He was a highly-regarded three-star recruit during his time spent as a prep at Putnam Science Academy in Connecticut before finding his way to Jonesboro to play for the Red Wolves. 

The Catamounts finished up the season shooting the basketball a lot better than they did at the start of the season. Johnson was a three-star recruit coming out of high school, spending time in the prestigious Putnam Academy, which is one of the best high school basketball programs in the country.  In 2023-24, Johnson garnered the 5AAA Player of the Year, averaging 15.6 PPG, 2.2 APG and 1.6 SPG. 

The Catamounts made just one portal addition to the front court during the recruiting process, as Craft and staff brought in 7-0, 235-lb Abdulai Kabba from the University of Denver. Kabba, who is a native of Sierra Leone, missed the entire conference portion of the schedule last season for the Hawks, which in essence, saw him miss the final 17 games of the season. 

In 16 games for the Redhawks last season, Kabba averaged 4.4 PPG and 4.6 RPG and led the squad with 21 blocks. Kabba is the kind of player that, if properly developed, could be a dominant force in the Southern Conference, especially on the defensive end of the floor as a rim protector. WCU has had some dominant rim protecting centers in the past, with guys like Rans Brempong and Richie Gordon coming to mind. It's been a while since we have seen WCU have a big guy in the post that you have to account for, and certainly if this acquisition ends up panning out, Kabba could be a dominant force in the paint for the Catamounts. 

It's a solid, guard-heavy class from the portal brought in by Craft and his staff, and he's got a good mix of scoring talent as well as skilled distributors and shooters that could provide the backdrop for a pretty significant turnaround from just eight wins a year ago, however, only time will tell. 

Freshman Additions:

Head coach Tim Craft and staff ended up bringing in a pair of recruits from the high school ranks to the 2025-26 team--both in the front court--to round out the recruiting efforts and officially fill out the roster heading into the new season.

Samuel Dada (Link Academy/Lagos, Nigeria) and Tayeshaun Smith (Combine Academy/Raleigh, N.C.) round out the signing class, and both will have a chance to break into the rotation this fall. 

Dada, who marks the third international addition to the roster and second from the continent of Africa, possesses good athleticism and skill, and the Lagos, Nigeria product showed that both in his time as prep at North Kansas City High school and then at Link Academy. In the 2023-24 season, which he spent at North Kansas City High School, he averaged an impressive 11.4 PPG and 11.2 RPG, while showing his ability as a passer, averaging three assists-per-game. 

The 6-9 forward also was active on the defensive end in both stops along his prep journey, with that showing up most glaringly in his final season spent at NCKHS in 2023-24, contributing 33 blocks and 26 steals. Like Kabba, Dada has the potential to give the Catamounts some explosive rim protection.

Tayeshaun Smith is a 6-7 forward from just up the road in the capital city of Raleigh, as he spent time at both the Combine Academy and 1 of 1 Academy. During the 2024-25 season at Combine Academy as a member of the Blue Checks squad, which is affiliated with Overtime Elite, he averaged a solid 10.0 PPG and 8.0 RPG, while being a solid worker on the defensive end of the floor, ranking within the top five of his league in total blocks. Smith ranks as a 3.5-star recruit by verbalcommits.com and is a composite three-star if you total in his rankings from both rivals and 247Sports. 

Early 2025-26 Outlook:

So what does the future look like for Western Carolina in year two under Tim Craft? In a word...Improved. What improvement looks like on the wins and losses ledger could be significant, but it's more that Craft has a group of players that have the skill-set that he wants to do.

Last season, he took a group of players that he had to quickly put together and hoped they meshed with the scheme that he was bringing in on both ends of the floor and hope it worked. Eventually it did, although initially at the start of conference play it was hard to tell, as the Catamounts were on the wrong end of some blowout losses. 

By the time the calendar flipped to February, however, things were beginning to change and real improvement could be seen on the floor. The Catamounts shot just 30.5% from three-point range last season, posting 272 made triples on the season. I expect to see a rise in both numbers this season, as I expect the Catamounts to finish in the top five in both shooting percentage from long-range, as well as threes made. 

The Catamounts did a few things well last season, with free throw shooting and defending the three being among the best. WCU ranked third in the SoCon in free throw percentage (74.6%), holding foes to just 32.6% from long-range last season.  

The Catamounts, however, were one of the worst shooting teams from both the field (ranked 353 out of 355 teams in the nation last season, connecting on just 39.6% from the field), as well as being among the worst perimeter shooting teams in the nation in the 2024-25 season (ranked 330th out of 355 ranked teams last season in three-point field goal percentage, connecting on just 30.5% from long-range in 2024-25). I am fairly certain we will see a vast improvement in both areas in the upcoming season. 

I expect the biggest improvement for WCU this coming season will come on the defensive end, with more size and athleticism, the Cats should be solid on that end of the floor. I don't exactly know what that will equate to in terms of wins, but I expect the Catamounts to be competing for a top six seed and a bye in the conference tournament at the very least. 

Starters Lost: (2)-Chevalier "Ice" Emery (transferred to Cleveland State), Bernard Pelote (out of eligibility)

Others Lost: (2) G-Brandon Morgan (transferred to Hofstra), F-Cinque Lemon (transferred to Tallahassee Community College)

Potential Breakout Player in 2025-26:  G-Cord Stansberry

Best Transfer Portal Get: PG-Julien Soumaoro 

Best Freshman Addition: F--Tayeshaun Smith

Overall Portal/Recruiting Synopsis and Grade: B+

The Citadel forward Sola Adebisi (photo courtesy of The Citadel athletics)

10. The Citadel (5-25, 0-18/10th in SoCon)--The coaching gig at The Citadel has by now officially passed VMI is the toughest in college basketball...At least in my opinion. It seems that the good days that seemed to be ushered in by Duggar Baucom in his first couple of years with a run-and-gun style of basketball based on a style used NCAA Division III program Grinnell College and it worked to a degree.

The problem is that eventually everyone adjusted, and in the end, the support for the fast-paced style and the backing that was there from the administration seemed to disappear when things started to gon off the rails. But if things were bad at the end of the Baucom era, which ended at the conclusion of the 2021-22 season, we only thought they were bad. 

It's true that the 2019-20 Bulldogs (6-24, 0-18 SoCon) were pretty bad, becoming the first of two teams in program history to win a league game all year. But as bad as that team and that season was, it would be hard to imagine things getting any worse in Charleston, especially after the Bulldogs brought back a coach, in Ed Conroy, who took the Bulldogs program to only their second 20-win season in program history in 2008-09 and first-ever appearance in the college basketball postseason, garnering an invite to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT).

The 2024-25 season might have accounted for not only one of the worst in The Citadel's hoops history, but also one of the worst by a single team in Southern Conference basketball history, as the Bulldogs lost their final 22 games to close out the season following a 5-3 start.  This is what happens when a team truly does get down on itself and can't find a way back.

It was evident for all to see. The Bulldogs might have played their best game of the season on the road in a late February contest at eventual league champion, and even hit an apparent game-winning shot that was ruled "good" at Chattanooga to win the game, however, after review the shot was just after the buzzer and ruled "no-good". In the next outing at rival Furman on the ensuing Wednesday night, the Bulldogs went from a one-point loss to the Mocs to the league's worst loss in conference play--a 43-point thrashing at the hands of rival Furman--in Greenville and those two games probably summed up the Bulldogs' 2024-25 season best.

The effort to come up only one-point short after belieiving momentarily they had secured their first SoCon win at the best team in the league only to find out it was yet another loss. That deflation was easy to see in the 85-42 loss at Furman.

For Conroy, it was a trying season for him professionally, but also personally. It's tough to recruit to The Citadel, and it's historically even tougher to win at the Military College of South Carolina, which is precisely why so few have done it, and those who have, haven't really won consistently. 

Following The Citadel's opening round () loss to VMI at the Southern Conference Tournament, I had a chance to catch up with Ed Conroy, who is one of my favorite people because of the fact that he does things the right way and has throughout his career. He expressed to me on the elevator to the parking garage after the game just how hard it was and how much the sport and literally take out of you, especially when things don't go well. He didn't have to say it, as his body language told the entire story.

Conroy is real and he's not a coach that lets cliches get in the way of what he has to say, and not only is he a tremendous Xs and Os coach, but he's also a transparent coach. He was telling me after the loss to VMI how tough it had been to lose games in league play like the OT home losses to Furman and WCU and then even the loss at UTC...It was a breaking loss to the psyche. 

You could also see he still had a passion to do what he does, and that was kind of refreshing after such a tough season both personally and professionally. 

The reality is, it wasn't that The Citadel or its staff did anything necessarily wrong in coaching, however, I conclude in my own estimation and nothing in what coach Conroy told me, but my own conclusion is that the Bulldogs missed it when it came to recruiting from the portal. That didn't really show up as much in the previous two seasons, but this season it was pretty evident in terms of talent, that other than maybe two players on the roster, the Bulldogs had been so out-talented most nights that it was tough to overcome that even with good coaching. 

For the life of me, it kind of makes me wonder why anyone would coach The Citadel, and that's being brutally honest. Charleston is a great place, and there are a lot of perks to the education you can get at a place like The Citadel, and if you put in the work and allow the discipline to take hold and shape you, it can get your foot in the door for pretty much any job. 

But looking at it from purely a hoops perspective, and now with the portal affecting literally everything, there is a sobering reality that begins to set in. Life is different for all mid-majors with the transfer portal, however, for a program that has already never made the NCAA Tournament without the portal, it almost now seems impossible.

It's a tough job and one that you have to get everything right to put yourself in to get a chance to compete for a regular-season title, and after that, a conference title. Nothing is impossible, but the Bulldogs have had some historically great coaches come through like Norm Sloan and Les Robinson, but even legendary names like that haven't been able to get the Bulldogs to an NCAA Tournament. That brings me back to Conroy, who is a legendary name in Charleston, for both his ability to lead a team like the 2008-09 Bulldogs to win over a Steph Curry-led Davidson team at McAlister Field House to his familial ties to Charleston and The Citadel itself, as Ed not only graduated from the military college of South Carolina, but his cousin--famed author Pat Conroy--literally wrote best-selling books about Charleston and what life was like playing basketball at The Citadel. Some of that didn't go over well with The Citadel's alums, but later was all forgiven in recent years. 

And while I think why would you coach at a place like that where the famed Norm Sloan and Les Robinson never got the program to the NCAA Tournament, then I think well if anyone could do it, it's probably Ed Conroy.  With all his ties to both The Citadel and Charleston and the fact that he has had success before, makes him the perfect coach to lead the program. 

However, he knows as well as anyone that something needs to drastically change in the immediate future for the Bulldogs to just find their way back to some kind of success in the league, and it starts with recruiting in the new portal era and figuring out how to package a product that has never been very successful into one that is attractive to a graduate student looking to finish out his career. 

It's not so much about the military aspect of it, as most one or two-year guys aren't going to have to worry about that side of the life, but more how do you get a recruit to come to Charleston to believe he can be a part of "The first" and "the only" to do something. That recruiting pitch could be something to run with if you can just get the recruit to Charleston. It might actually end up being an easier sell in the portal era than it ever has been before.  While that might be the reality, something drastically went wrong last season. 

The Bulldogs didn't shoot the ball well from any point on the floor last season if we're brutally honest. They didn't have enough shooters to be competitive in most games last season, and that pretty much forced a team that wasn't great defensively to begin with to play near flawlessly on that end of the floor. Add the fact that the Bulldogs spent most of the season as the nation's worst foul shooting team and you have the makings of a 5-25 season. 

The Bulldogs finished out the 2024-25 season ranking 332 in scoring offense (66.6 PPG), 317th in field goal percentage (41.9%), 345th in three-point field goal percentage (29.5%) and 354th out of 355 teams ranked in the country in free throw shooting (61.7%). It pretty well spells out that the Bulldogs weren't a very good shooting team last season. 

So how can the Bulldogs improve upon the disaster that was the 2024-25 season? Well, it starts with evaluating both the roster returning and the one that has decided to move on. As far as those that have exited Charleston and the Bulldogs' program, the most notable of those is Brody Fox, who was a dynamic scorer from the NCAA Division III level, and he came in and gave the Bulldogs one season--his final season of eligibility--and he would end up finishing out his college career averaging 16.7 PPG, which led the team, while his 5.1 rebounds-per-game ranked second on the team.

Also having moved on are Colby McCalister (transferred to West Florida), as well as others like Cam Glover (out of eligibility), forward Dominic Commisso (transferred to St. Leo), center Graham Eikenberry (transferred to Western Oregon) and guard Paxton Davidson (transferred to Pace) to name a few. 

The core of the team will be formed around what returns, and the most productive of those returnees for the 2025-26 season are guys like forwards Sola Adebisi, Kenyan Davis, and Christian Moore, who originally entered the transfer portal, but opted to return to the Bulldogs' program after initially weighing his options in the portal. It will give Conroy a nucleus of players that he retained to both develop and form a leadership council around moving forward into the off-season, as we inch closer to the 2025-26 campaign. 

Moore is coming off a season in which he looks like he might be ready to take that next step and become a reliable scoring option for the Bulldogs in the coming season. The 6-6, 225-lb small forward saw action in all 30 games for The Citadel last season, logging 11 starts. He finished the season averaging 8.7 PPG, however, in Southern Conference games, he posted a scoring average of 12.1 PPG. 

On a team that didn't shoot the ball well last season, the same couldn't be said for Moore, who posted a solid 36% shooting clip from three-point land in league games last season. He didn't shoot it as well in non-conference play from long-range, as he connected on just 33.3% (48-of-144) for the totality of the season. 

The athletic wing from Los Angeles, CA., ended up finishing the season posting a career-high 20 points in a loss at Western Carolina, while also sporting a seven-game streak of scoring 13 or more points in league games last season and finished scoring in double figures in 11 of 18 SoCon games last season. Moore will be a player that Conroy will look to be one of his offensive leaders in the upcoming campaign.

In a season where it was hard to find a lot of positives, one of the few and distinguishable was the play of 6-7 wing forward Sola Adebisi, who was in his first season at The Citadel as a graduate transfer from Florida State.  Adebisi would end up finishing out the season as the Bulldogs' second-leading scorer and will be the leading returning scorer this season, as he averaged 8.2 PPG and 5.7 RPG last season.

Like Moore, Adebisi is a good athlete and performs exceptionally well on the offensive glass. Forty-seven of his 95 total rebounds last season were on the offensive end of the floor. Adebisi started all 25 games he logged action in last season, and the former Florida State Seminole has one season of eligibility remaining.  He enjoyed his best performance of the season in a home loss to Wofford, as he posted a career-high 19 points against the Terriers. Adebisi had another solid performance in a home loss to Samford, as he just missed a double-double with 18 points and nine rebounds. 

He finished the season with 10 double-digit scoring games for the season, as well as recording eight or more rebounds in nine games in the 2024-25 campaign. 

Rounding out the veteran returnees is Kenyan Davis, who has battled injuries and other off-court issues throughout his career in Charleston, however, the 2025-26 season might be the first in which he is locked in and ready to go. The 6-5 guard/forward has big-time potential and was playing a key role before being suspended for the spring semester. He started 12 of the first 13 games in non-conference play, averaging  9.2 PPG and 3.2 RPG prior to being suspended. 

The Chicago, IL, product is a cerebral, athletic guard that enjoyed his best game in a Bulldogs uniform against Stetson in what was one of the Bulldogs' five wins last season, as he netted a career-best 18 points in that particular contest. Davis also turned in a solid performance in The Citadel's season-opening loss at Boston College, as he was one of three Bulldogs in double figures in the loss, finishing with 10.

Others returning to the fold that were a part of last season's roster for the Bulldogs include 6-4 forward Dante Kearse, 6-1 guard Eze Wale, as well as 6-2 guard Jack Walter and 6-4 forward Aidan Alexander, who both redshirted the 2024-25 season. 

Wale, a 6-1 sophomore guard from Providence, RI, saw action in 26 of 30 games for The Citadel last season, and would actually start the final 10 games of the 2024-25 season for the Bulldogs. In Wale, the Bulldogs might have found some consistency and some reliability at the point guard spot, which is a problem that Conroy and staff spent a majority of the season trying to figure out. 

The jet-quick guard enjoyed his best performance of his true freshman season in what would turn out to be the final game of the season in the conference tournament loss against VMI, netting a season and career-high 12 points against the Keydets in a 73-62 loss at the Harrah's Cherokee Center in the play-in round of the tournament. He had two five-assists games last season, recording those in the conference tournament loss to VMI, as well as a mid-February home loss to Wofford. 

Kearse, a 6-4 rising sophomore forward, logged action in 22 games for The Citadel last season, posting a season-high nine points in a 94-57 early December win over Toccoa Falls, while seeing a season-high 21 minutes in a 67-63 home overtime loss to Furman in early January. 

Conroy and staff have so far assembled incoming talent from both the portal, as well as the high school ranks to round out the roster heading into 2025-26. Three additions from the transfer portal and two from the high school ranks highlight what the Bulldogs have brought in for the 2025-26 season. 

The first commitment for the Bulldogs from the portal was made by 5–11-point guard Gabe Hernandez, who comes to the Bulldogs from Barry University, which is the same program that produced Furman shooting guard Nick Anderson last season. 

Hernandez will have a chance to come in right away and be the starter at the point for the Bulldogs this season, and much like Fox was last season athletically for The Citadel, his athleticism will be a delight to local fans who come out to watch The Citadel play this fall and winter. In his final season with the Bucs, Hernandez averaged 14.8 PPG, 4 RPG and 3.2 APG in his final season with the Bucs.  

He will give the Bulldogs an explosive element at point guard with his athleticism, however, he isn't a great perimeter threat, finishing the 2024-25 season at just 32.5% (25-of-77). In his two seasons with Barry, Hernandez logged action in a total of 60 games, which included making starts in all 29 games last season for the Bucs.

The second addition from the transfer portal came just a few days later, as Valdosta State wing Braxton Williams announced his commitment to the Bulldogs to play for Ed Conroy next season. With Adebisi, Moore and Davis also back, Williams will the Bulldogs yet another athletic, bouncy wing that the staff can rotate in the lineup. 

Williams spent the past two seasons playing for the Blazers in the Gulf South Conference, where he was productive, averaging in double figures in each of those campaigns. Prior to finding his way to the NCAA Division II ranks, Williams spent his time plying his trade and developing his overall game in three seasons at Coastal Alabama South of the JUCO ranks. 

After averaging 19.9 PPG and 5.0 RPG in his final season there, his game has translated into being a double figure scorer at every level, including last season with the Blazers, as he posted 14.2 PPG and 4.1 RPG, starting 31 out of 32 games.

Williams finished the 2024-25 season connecting on 34.0% (64-of-188) from three-point range and finished the season with 22 double-figure scoring performances, which included six games with 20 or more points. He turned his top game of the season against Mississippi College in a 22-point, 96-74, win, as he posted 26 points on 9-of-12 shooting from the field, which included a 6-for-7 shooting effort from three-point range. 

Look for Williams to be a starter for the Bulldogs this coming season, and the combination him with either Adebisi or Davis in the lineup will immediately give the Bulldogs more athleticism. 

Rounding out the portal additions made by Conroy and staff during the spring is 6-4 shooting guard Carter Kingsbury, who comes to The Citadel from Iowa where he was a walk-on. Kingsbury has taken much the same route to The Citadel as former Bulldogs guard Austin Ash, who came to The Citadel from the University of Iowa two years ago, where he was a walk-on. Ash ended, up paying off in a big way for Conroy and the Bulldogs, as he finished out his only season averaging 15.2 PPG to lead the Bulldogs.

Like Ash, Kingsbury was a preferred walk-on playing for Fran McCaffery at Iowa, and the 6-4 shooting guard is a solid perimeter threat even though he didn't see all that much time during his four years with the Hawkeyes. 

The Big Ten All-Academic selection ended up finishing his final season with the Hawkeyes averaging 1.1 PPG and 0.8 RPG, seeing action in a career-best 23 games. Kingsbury hails from Ponca, Nebraska, where he left as Ponca High School's all-time leading scorer (1,771 career points), as well as the record for single-season scoring (595 points as a senior). He also left as the program's all-time leader in three-pointers made, posting 236 made triples during his prep career.

The one other addition to the fold has a European background, in 6-7 junior forward Cassius Bonjasky, who is already enrolled at The Citadel as of this past January. The junior native of Almere, Netherlands comes on board from New Mexico Military Institute (JUCO) where he saw action in 28 games, with 16 starts, averaging 6.4 PPG and 3.4 RPG in the 2023-24 season. 

The quartet of players from the portal will have a chance to both contribute and start next season, and I expect it is likely that both Gabe Hernandez and Braxton Williams seem like the most likely of the trio of players to step in and start right away. 

Freshman Additions:

The Citadel went out and signed a pair of players from the high school ranks, as Conroy signed a both a shooting guard and a power forward in the fall signing period last November.

Marcos Gonzalez is a 6-3 shooting guard that comes onboard from Brother Rice High School in Chicago and he is coming off a big senior campaign, which saw him named as the Southtown Boys Basketball Player of the Year after averaging 18.6 PPG, 5.6 RPG and 3.1 APG during his senior season of 2024-25. Gonzales led Brother Rice to a runner-up state title finish last season, and is a good enough perimeter threat that should see him break into the rotation for the Bulldogs in 2025-26. 

The other freshman acquisition the Bulldogs made during the off-season is 6-8 power forward Chase Williams, who comes on board for The Citadel out of West Bladen High School out of Elizabethtown, N.C., where he was a three-time all-conference selection, averaging 20.8 PPG in his final season as a prep. He is a three-star recruit and with his ability and efficiency around the basket, along with his leadership qualities, he should find his way into the rotation as soon as the 2025-26 season. 

Early 2025-26 Outlook:

Ed Conroy and the Bulldogs have approached the off-season with a little better idea of how to solve their issues it appears and not let things to reach the level of struggle of which they reached last season.

Not only were new players brought in, but also new staff members. Conroy recently welcomed in a couple of new additions to his coaching staff, with the hiring of Andrew Glover and Brady Schuck as assistants earlier this month.

Glover and Schuck are both Charleston natives and will understand the recruiting culture and lifestyle better than anyone. Glover is a graduate of Wando High School and spent this past season as the head coach of Myers Park High School in Charlotte, leading the program to a conference title and an appearance in the Elite Eight in the state playoffs. For his efforts last season, Glover was named conference coach of the year.

Prior to his time spent as head coach at Myers Park, Glover was the first Head Boys' Basketball Coach at Lucy Beckham High School, leading the program to the Elite Eight in 2022-23 and a Sweet Sixteen appearance in 2023-24, garnering Coach of the Year plaudits in the process. During his own prep basketball career at Wando, Glover was the captain of Warriors' State Championship winning team. 

Glover also spent time at the collegiate level as an assistant coach honing his craft, spending two seasons at USC Aiken as the Director of Player Development, as serving in assistant coaching role on state championship winning teams at Grey Collegiate Academy in 2018 and '19, respectively.

Schuck brings a winning background as both a coach and player back to the Low Country where he grew up. Schuck spent the past two seasons as an assistant at the NCAA Division II level at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL, as he was part of a pair of winning seasons during his stint with highly-successful Saints basketball program, which included a 2023-24 season that saw the Saints win 20 games and make it to the championship game of the Peach Belt Conference Tournament. 

Prior to his time at Flagler, Schuck got his start in coaching at James Island Charter School in Charleston, leading the Trojans to the Sweet Sixteen in 2023 and a Region Championship in 2024, garnering Coach of the Year honors in the process.

Schuck brings a wealth of knowledge about Southern Conference basketball to the staff for the Bulldogs, having spent time playing at Furman University for Niko Medved and Bob Richey as a part of the Paladins' highly successful program. He was a part of a 2016-17 Paladins team that shared the Southern Conference regular-season title with UNCG and ETSU, winning 23 games in the process. In the 2018-19 season, Schuck's Furman team garnered its first-ever AP Top 25 ranking, knocking off both Loyola-Chicago and defending national champion Villanova as a part of a historic 12-0 start to that season. 

Hiring two guys like Glover and Schuck that have been a part of winning no matter where they have been can only be infectious to others, and that's something The Citadel's basketball needs desperately right now.

As far as what the outlook for the season is, it's hard for one not to think the Bulldogs will not be better in all phases. I think most of the improvement will be seen in the fact this team has better shooters and it should me more athletic, and that should enable them to be a lot better on the defensive end of the floor. 

When you look at Conroy's most-successful seasons as the head coach of The Citadel, being not good but great defensively has always been a hallmark of those teams. Even the 2022-23 season, which also saw the Bulldogs struggle, but competitive in a lot of ways, even knocking off eventual league champion Furman, the Bulldogs were solid on the defensive end of the floor at times during that season. 

One of the interesting things that stands out about this team on paper is that its tallest player on the roster is 6-8, and so that means the Bulldogs will be one of the smaller teams in the SoCon this coming season and will be placing a premium on that athleticism and length to create havoc and cause issues. As you probably already know, Conroy excels as a tactician in terms of Xs and Os, and he will have his team prepared with a unique defensive game plan each time out in league play, which will no doubt be curtailed to said SoCon foe's personnel on the other side and designed to take away their strengths. There is perhaps no coach better in the SoCon at scouting teams and having his team prepared defensively. That's what made the 2024-25 season so bizarre to see the Bulldogs perform so below form even if under-talented as other teams in the league.

As far as realistic expectations are concerned this season, it's tough to say. However, I think if the Bulldogs can win 5-7 SoCon games this season it would be considered a huge improvement and something to certainly build on for the future. It's going to take some time to get the ship righted so to speak, and some patience will be required by newly installed Director of Athletics Art Chase (once an SID at The Citadel), but I am sure he understands that all too well. 

Starters Lost: (3)--G-Brody Fox, F/C (out of eligibility) F/C--John Adams (out of eligibility), G-Cam Glover (out of eligibility)

Others Lost: (6)--C--Graham Eikenberry (transferred to Western Oregon), G--Braylen Smith (Entered transfer portal and has announced a destination), G--Paxton Davidson (transferred to Pace), F--Dominic Commisso (transferred to St. Leo), G--Colby McCalister (transferred to West Florida), F--Cole Alexander (transferred/walked on at Fairleigh Dickinson)

Potential Breakout Player in 2025-26:  F-Kenyan Davis or Christian Moore

Best Transfer Portal Get: F-Braxton Williams

Best Freshman Addition: F--Chase Williams

Overall Portal/Recruiting Synopsis and Grade: B

**--Now that I have successfully completed each team's portal and freshman additions during the recruiting process, evaluated what has been lost, what returns, and given an analysis on all 10 league teams, the final part of this series of articles will be a synthesis of all these, ranking the portal classes, freshman classes, as well as individual rankings of portal additions and freshman additions heading into the season. The final part of the article will be an early look at how I think the league will pan out in 2025-26, and I will give my early prognostications for the upcoming season. I am looking forward to part four and hope you are looking forward to reading it. It's going to be an adventure to write for sure!