Bucky takes his 'ball' to the biggest Ball of them all; Samford wins SoCon Title
No. 1 seed Samford got 25 points from SoCon Tournament Most Outstanding Player Achor Achor, while SoCon First-Team All-Tournament selection Jermaine Marshall added 23, as the Bulldogs held off feisty No. 7 seed East Tennessee State for a 76-69 win before a championship game crowd of 5,112 on hand at the Harrah's Cherokee Center Asheville to witness the Bulldogs return to the Big Dance for the first time in 24 years.
The win sees the Bulldogs punch their ticket to their first NCAA Tournament since 2000, and improve to 29-5 and will await its opening round NCAA Tournament opponent on Sunday,March 17 on CBS at 6 p.m. EST.
With the loss, ETSU's valiant effort over the course of the four-day tournament comes to an end, as the Bucs finish the season 19-16 and fall to 8-5 all-time in conference tournament title games. The Bucs were attempting to do something that hasn't been done in 75 years, which is win four games to claim the Southern Conference Tournament crown.
Clemson's four wins to claim the 1939 SoCon crown remains intact for at least another season. Monday night's title win by the top overall seed marks the seventh-straight season the No. 1 overall seed entering the Southern Conference Tournament has claimed the tournament title.The Bucs were the fourth No. 7 seed to play for the Southern Conference title game in the past five years. The No. 1 seed improved to 9-1 in the championship game over the past 10 seasons.
Samford's tournament title marks just the third NCAA Tournament appearance in program history, and the 29 wins are a school record. For the second-straight season, the winner of the Southern Conference Tournament ends a long streak of not having made the Big Dance, as last season Furman ended a 43-year NCAA Tournament drought to move on to the NCAA Tournament in 2023, while a year later, the Bulldogs will make their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 24 years, as well as their first as a Southern Conference member.
Should the Bulldogs win an NCAA Tournament First Round game, it would mark just the fifth time in league history that a team has won 30 games in a season. Samford would join NC State (1950-51), North Carolina (1945-46), Wofford (2018-19) and East Tennessee State (2019-20) as the only teams in league history. Not counting the COVID-19 compromised season, the SoCon champion has won at least 27 games in each of the past eight seasons.
The Bulldogs could join some rare company over the past 16 years should they win a game in March Madness, as one of three teams to win an NCAA Tournament game, alongside Furman (2023) and Wofford (2019). The Terriers were ranked in the NCAA Top 25 entering the 2019 NCAA Tournament before knocking off Seton Hall in the opening round of the tournament. The Paladins, which also achieved the program's first national Top 25 ranking during the 2018-19 alongside Wofford, won the school's first NCAA Tournament game in 49 years last March with their win over Virginia.
The ticket punched marks just the third time in program history that has happened, and the first two came in consecutive seasons, as the Bulldogs would make the 1999 and 2000 tournaments, respectively, as members of the Trans America Athletic Conference, which is now the Atlantic Sun Conference. The Bulldogs are 0-2 all-time in the Big Dance, with its last game in 2000 seeing Samford drop a 79-65 to Syracuse in the NCAA Midwest Regional.
Samford improved to 7-16 all-time against ETSU, which includes winning all three matchups this season, as the Bulldogs also captured a 75-72 win in Johnson City last month, while clinching the Southern Conference regular-season title with an 87-71 win over the Bucs a couple of weeks ago in Homewood. The Bulldogs have now won six-straight overall in the series dating back to the 2021-22 season.
Achor Achor was a major factor in both the semifinal and championship wins for the Bulldogs. Following a 28-point, 14-rebound effort in Samford's 84-77 semifinal win over Furman, the 6-9 junior from Melbourne, Australia posted his 25 points on 7-of-9 shooting from the field and 11-of-14 from the charity stripe, while also adding nine rebounds, including five offensive boards, to showcase his overall prowess on the offensive end. On the defensive end, Achor was also a menace, swatting away four ETSU shots, while also recording a pair of steals.
Marshall, meanwhile, recorded his 23 points on 7-of-14 shooting from the field and went 1-of-3 from three-point range and was 8-for-13 from the charity stripe. Jaden Campbell added 11 points to round out the double-figure scorers for the Bulldogs.
Rylan Jones, a steadying force throughout the 2023-24 season for the Bulldogs after transferring in from Utah State, finished the game with six points, four assists, two steals and no turnovers in 32:47 of total court action. The SoCon's "Newcomer of the Year" was a second-team all-tournament selection.
ETSU ended up the evening with a couple of players in double figures, with all-tournament selections Ebby Asamoah and Quimari Peterson leading the way, posting 18 and 17 points, respectively.
Asamoah finished out his career for the Bucs in stellar fashion, posting his 18 points on 5-of-15 shooting from the field and his 3-for-11 performance from three-point land saw the graduate transfer from Delaware set a new Southern Conference Tournament standard with 16 triples, averaging four a game over the course of the weekend.
The Bulldogs finished the title tilt connecting on 43.4% (23-of-53) from the field, while the Bucs connected on 40.7% (23-of-53) from the field for the game. The Bucs saw their string of three-straight games having made double-digit threes come to an end, as ETSU went just 6-of-23 (26.1%) from downtown. The Bulldogs, who led the SoCon in three-point field goal percentage for much of the season, finished connecting on just 27.8% (5-for-18) from long range.
ETSU held statistical advantages in second-chance points (13-6) and total rebounds (41-32), while Samford finished with advantages in points from turnovers (16-11), points in the paint (36-24) and fast-break points (10-2).
ETSU Effort
ETSU's effort and energy was almost astonishing throughout the entirety of the weekend considering they had to play four games in four days, nearly pulling off the unthinkable in the process. The Bucs posted an overtime, 85-84, win over Chattanooga in almost unbelievable fashion in a game that ran two hours and twenty-eight minutes before turning around and playing a two-hour and thirty-seven minute affair in the championship game, which featured 53 fouls whistled. ETSU claimed 168 rebounds over the course of four games, including 93 in the semifinal and championship alone to go along with 39 offensive rebounds in the two games.
The Bucs also set a SoCon Tournament record with 42 steals in four games, as the Bucs charted a combined 19 in the semifinals and championship and another 23 against VMI and UNC Greensboro in its first two games of the tournament.
Bucky's Ball!
The Cinderella Story might be head coach Bucky McMillan himself, as the former high school coach made the move to the Division I level almost seamlessly. He's a hometown product from Birmingham, and played his college basketball at Birmingham Southern where he was coached by current assistant coach Duane Reboul, who was one of the top coaches in the country for 17 seasons at the helm of the Birmingham Southern program.
Reboul led the transition for Birmingham-Southern from the NAIA level to the NCAA Division I level, as he led the Panthers to the 2004 Big South Conference Title, and was named Big South Coach of the Year on two occasions (2004 and '06).
McMillan now gets to take Bucky Ball--a high-intensity style of relentless full-court pressure that forces the opposition into miscues--to the Big Dance. Bucky Ball will also likely determine how long Bucky stays at the Ball as a Cinderella, and given the right matchup, the Bulldogs could cause some havoc in the Big Dance.
How It Happened:
The Bulldogs carried a narrow 40-38 lead into the halftime locker room, however, it looked as though Samford might run away with the game in the early portions of the game, as the Bulldogs went on an 11-2 run after the Bucs got the first points of the night on a layup by Karon Boyd.
The Bucs then went on a 9-2 run to get right back in the game. Neither team would lead by more than four points the remainder of the half, as the Bulldogs went to half leading by a bucket
The Bucs fell behind as nine on three occasions in the opening 10 minutes of the second half, with the last coming on an Achor Achor layup in the paint with 12:42 remaining to give the Bulldogs the 56-47 lead. ETSU, however, continued to manage from never letting the Bulldog lead grow to double digits. With the Bulldogs ahead 63-56 with 9:13 remaining, ETSU would mount one final surge, using an 8-2 run to get within 65-64 following an Asamoah jumper in the lane as the Bucs crowd came alive once again with excitement.
On the next possession, Rylan Jones responded with maybe the most important made shot of the night, taking his own deflected pass out of the air and re-directing it towards the basket in one-motion, and the ball splashed through the net to give the Bulldogs a 67-64 lead with just over six minutes remaining.
The Bulldogs would eventually grow their lead to three possessions, at a margin of seven points with just a minute remaining, as Jermaine Marshall connected on a pair of free throws to make it a 73-66 game. Samford would make only one more field goal for the game, as they would score seven of their final nine points from the line. In fact, over the final 6:23 of the game, both ETSU and Samford combined to make only four shots from the field.
Ebby Asamoah, ETSU
Quimari Peterson, ETSU
JP Pegues, Furman
Achor Achor, Samford
Jermaine Marshall, Samford
Second team
Jaden Seymour, ETSU
Marcus Foster, Furman
David Thomas, Mercer
Rylan Jones, Samford
Jan Zidek, Chattanooga
Nathan Johnson, Samford
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