Big South Conference Notebook
by Jerry Hinnen
Down to the Wire
Every year, something NFL fans look forward to is the late-season appearance of charts and lists detailing exactly what scenarios need to play out for their team to make the playoffs. Those fans now have something in common with the scenario-studying supporters of Winthrop, Birmingham-Southern, and Coastal Carolina, each of whom enters the final days of conference play with a shot at Big South title and the league’s all-important top seed for the conference tournament. (The Big South plays at the higher seed’s home court, the semifinals at the regular season champion, and title game at the top remaining seed.)
For more than a month, the Big South has looked like a two-horse race going down to this Saturday’s photo finish between Birmingham-Southern and Winthrop in Birmingham. But after smoking-hot Coastal Carolina upended BSC at home 69-59 last Saturday and cellar-dwelling Liberty shocked Winthrop 78-71 in Lynchburg Monday night, 10-4 Coastal now has their own slim shot at grabbing the Big South’s top slot. In the end, BSC’s and Winthrop’s losses could mean nothing at all, or they could cost them a shot at the NCAA Tournament.
Here’s what each team needs to happen to claim the Big South title and – to borrow a phrase from the NFL – finish with home court advantage throughout the Big South tourney.
Birmingham-Southern
Record: 12-3. Schedule: vs. Winthrop, Feb. 25
The Panthers have the simplest – and, many would say, easiest – path to the Big South championship. With Monday’s 62-46 road thrashing of Charleston Southern behind them, if BSC can hold serve against Winthrop in Bill Battle Coliseum Saturday they will claim the league title outright with a 13-3 record.
There’s plenty of reason to expect them to do so. BSC currently holds the nation’s sixth-longest home winning streak at 15 games, one boosted by a perfect 7-0 record at home in Big South play this season. Birmingham is the league’s longest road trip and Winthrop’s game Thursday night against High Point will do the Eagles no favors as they try to prepare. To boot, some Panthers – most notably 6-9 forward Thomas Viglianco, who totaled three field goals in BSC’s last four losses combined, all on the road – appear much more comfortable in the friendly confines of Bill Battle.
But lest Panther fans get too confident, there remains the matter of Winthrop’s 84-43 bludgeoning of BSC at home Jan. 5, the program’s worst loss since the 2000 season. It also remains to be seen how well the Panthers will deal with a tight endgame situation: remarkably, only one of BSC’s 15 Big South contests have been decided by fewer than 10 points.
Not that BSC will complain, but everything will ride on the game with Winthrop. Because the Panthers would lose tiebreakers with both the Eagles (who would have swept them head-to-head) and Coastal (who wins the tie by virtue of their sweep over Winthrop) there is no scenario in which BSC loses Saturday and still wins the top seed.
Winthrop
Record: 11-3. Schedule: vs. High Point, Feb. 23; at Birmingham-Southern, Feb. 25
Like the Panthers, the Eagles still control their own destiny, even after the letdown at Liberty. Defeat High Point at home and BSC on the road, and Winthrop will own another championship banner and be only three home games away from earning their second straight trip to the NCAAs. Do that, and very few fans will remember the Eagles lost three games in a conference many expected them to romp through undefeated.
It won’t be easy. High Point gave the Eagles fits in a 70-67 loss at High Point and after a brief slump, the Panthers look to be in confident form again after a spirited BracketBusters performance on the road at Loyola (Md.) and an 88-67 home whipping of UNC-Asheville Monday. And as noted above, the Eagles won’t just be playing Birmingham-Southern Saturday: they’ll be facing the Big South’s best home team, on that team’s Homecoming, in arguably that program’s biggest game in its history, all on one day of rest. Those aren’t exactly the circumstances Gregg Marshall would choose to play a winner-take-all championship game under. Losses in both games would very likely result in Winthrop’s sliding all the way to the third seed; Coastal would have to lose both their remaining games, at Liberty and at Radford, to keep the Eagles in second.
There is good news for Winthrop. For starters, they could get a mulligan on a loss to High Point. If Coastal drops either of their final two games (on the road to both Liberty and Radford) a win at BSC gives them the top seed anyway as both teams would be 12-4.
Second, the Liberty loss may have been a legitimate fluke. Winthrop had been playing well of late (their previous three games had been shellackings of Radford and UNC-Asheville and their epic 98-97 double-overtime win over Northern Illinois) and caught both Liberty and the Flames’ inspirational Larry Blair playing their best game of the season. It seems unlikely that players like point guard Chris Gaynor – who leads the Big South in assist-to-turnover ratio but had only one dish Monday – or forward James Shuler – who took only five shots against the Flames and hit just one – won’t improve in the week’s later two games.
But if they and the Eagles don’t, what has been a successful but ultimately disappointing season may end with even further disappointment.
Coastal Carolina
Record: 10-4. Schedule: at Liberty Feb. 23, at Radford Feb. 25.
Thursday night, you could find High Point fans decked out in purple face paint, purple wigs, and purple HPU t-shirts, and even they wouldn’t be rooting as hard for the Panthers as the fans down the road at Coastal. There is only one scenario in which Coastal wins the top seed and brings the Big South semifinals to Kimbel Arena: CCU wins over Liberty and Radford combined with a Winthrop loss to High Point and a Birmingham-Southern loss to Winthrop. Any other combination of results sees CCU nabbing the second seed at best.
While the Chanticleer fans might be forgiven for scoreboard watching Thursday and Saturday, the Coastal players themselves would be well-advised to focus on the opponents in front of them. Liberty and their supporters will be brimming with confidence for Thursday’s home game, while Radford dealt Coastal their only loss in their last eleven games, a 70-69 overtime win in Conway Jan. 21. A loss in either game would remove CCU from title consideration.
It would not necessarily, however, remove them the battle for second. If Winthrop loses both of their contests, CCU’s sweep of the Eagles means just one win would be enough for the second seed.
However, thanks to their season sweep of Winthrop, a pair of CCU wins guarantees them no worse than the second seed. Coastal would finish 12-4, would earn a tie with whichever team loses in Birmingham, and would win the tiebreak with either as well: with Winthrop thanks to head-to-head, and with BSC by virtue of a better record against the conference’s highest seed (i.e., Winthrop).
On the flip side, a pair of Coastal losses (assuming Radford defeats last-place VMI Thursday) would drop the Chants all the way to fourth place behind the Highlanders, who would tie the Chants at 10-6 and take the tiebreaker based on their head-to-head sweep.
Got all that?
Moving up in BracketBusters
If the Big South’s continued participation in the BracketBusters event goes as well as it did in this, its first year, it will be something the conference’s fans will look forward to on an annual basis.
The three Big South teams involved – Winthrop, High Point, and UNC-Asheville – all put together solid performances that showed why the conference, now all the way up to No. 19 in stats guru Ken Pomeroy’s conference RPI (ahead of such notable conferences as the Ohio Valley, Patriot League, and most significantly the SoCon), is on the rise.
The biggest win belonged to Winthrop, 98-97 home victors over MAC West Division leader Northern Illinois in double overtime. James Shuler poured in a career-high 27 points, including the free throws that sent the game into overtime, the three-pointer that sent the game into a second overtime, and the three-pointer that won it with 3.1 seconds remaining.
“That’s the best ball game in my tenure,” Gregg Marshall told the Rock Hill Herald. “It would have been a hard one to lose, was a great one to win.”
The Big South’s other BracketBuster teams did the conference proud as well. Although a late 16-2 Greyhound run cost High Point a road win over Loyola (Md.), behind freshman Justin Dunn’s 21 points the Panthers recovered from a recent cold streak to control the game for most of the 40 minutes. UNC-Asheville’s hometown newspaper predicted a 12-point loss in their match-up with the OVC’s Eastern Kentucky Colonels, but Joe Barber’s 21 points helped the Bulldogs to a big second-half lead and an eventual 83-77 win.
As part of the BracketBusters agreement, Loyola and Eastern Kentucky will return the home game favor to HPU and UNCA as part of either the 2006 or 2007 non-conference season.
Around the league
- The aftershocks of Liberty’s win over Winthrop weren’t just felt at the top of the Big South standings. The victory bumped the 3-11 Flames out of a tie for the conference cellar with VMI and into the eighth and final spot in the Big South tourney. Making matters worse for the Keydets, their best shot for a late-season victory slipped away Saturday when they lost 59-48 on the road to Charleston Southern in an offensive performance coach Duggar Baucom told the Chalreston Post and Courier was “pitiful.” VMI closes at home against Radford Thursday.
- The Big South’s schedule-makers could hardly have done a better job in putting together this season’s final Saturday slate. Besides the likely Game of the Year between BSC and Winthrop, Radford will host CCU in a game that could decide the third seed, and even Charleston Southern and UNC-Asheville, currently tied for sixth at 6-9, will go head-to-head to decide which team gets a one-place bump in the standings.
- It’s a great time to be a scorer in the Big South. BSC’s James Collins (with a career-high 27) and Coastal’s Jack Leasure (22) combined for 49 points in their meeting last Saturday; Winthrop’s Torrell Martin (a career-high 32) and Liberty’s Larry Blair (37) combined for 69 points in their clash Monday; and Radford’s Whit Holcomb-Faye scored 37 and 36 points, respectively, in wins over Charleston Southern and Liberty.
Game of the Week: Winthrop at Birmingham-Southern, Saturday, 7 p.m.
Well, duh. The biggest Big South regular-season game in recent memory will feature any number of intriguing match-ups, but perhaps the most significant will pair shooting guards James Collins and Torrell Martin. Both are the most explosive players for their respective teams, and if they find a hot streak from outside, could swing the balance of the game single-handedly. Statistically, the Eagles’ Martin will face a much looser three-point defense than will Collins; BSC ranks dead-last in the conference in opponent’s three-point shooting percentage. But Winthrop will also have to pay much more attention to BSC’s post players than vice versa. Center Sredrick Powe still leads the nation in field goal percentage and dangerous power forward Dwayne Paul averages 11.3 points a game, while Winthrop center Phillip Williams is coming off of a 0-6 game against Liberty and power forward Craig Bradshaw spends much of his time on the perimeter. If the Eagle defense collapses too far inside, Collins may find room enough to warm up and shoot the Panthers to their first outright Big South title.
