Get to Know a College Basketball Mid-Major: Southern Conference

You know all about the Power 5 conferences in college basketball. You hear about those more than any other, and those groups often dominate the March Madness conversation. There are 26 other conferences out there, however, and our goal is to get you up to speed on the teams, players and fights in the standings to know before the conference tournaments, Selection Sunday and the official start of March Madness. It’s time for you to get to know a mid-major: this time, it’s the Southern Conference. The Southern Conference is an old one, forming all the way back in 1921. It remains entirely in the southern United States, with schools in Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. There are 10 teams in the conference — 11 in the 2026-2027 academic year — and all 10 of them will make the men’s and women’s basketball conference tournaments. Fun Southern Conference fact: it was the first conference to implement the 3-point line and shot in college basketball, all the way back in 1980. And another fun Southern Conference fact: there are 365 men’s college basketball teams in Division I, and just 363 women’s programs. The missing two are both thanks to SoCon: The Citadel and VMI do not sponsor women’s basketball, and both only began to admit women students in the 1990s. And a final fact: the automatic bid is the only way that a men’s or women’s team from SoCon is going to participate in March Madness, as none of the teams are anywhere near the bubble. Southern — Men’s College Basketball Leaders: The field is already set for the men’s Southern tournament. The top six seeds get a bye to the quarterfinals, while the bottom four have a play-in first round. What this means is that the top two seeds, East Tennessee and Wofford, are waiting for the winners of Chattanooga vs. The Citadel and UNC Greensboro vs. VMI, while Samford (3) takes on Furman (6), and Mercer (4) faces off against Western Carolina (5). ETSU is not just the 1-seed, but is also SoCon’s top team in the NCAA Evaluation Tool. That amounts to the 126th ranking, however — it’s not close to being on the bubble. Mercer is next up, at 170, then Furman at 198 wraps up the top-200 teams. Samford (212), Western Carolina (234), Wofford (239), Chattanooga (282) and UNC Greensboro (298) are it for those within the top 300, while The Citadel and VMI are two of the bottom-15 teams in Division I. That ETSU is the top team in SoCon should not be a surprise, given it has four of the conference’s top-20 players in Player Efficiency Rating. Senior forward and UMass Lowell transfer Cam Morris III is second in SoCon with a 26.2 PER. Sophomore forward Blake Barkley is seventh, at 22.4. Leading scorer Brian Taylor, a senior guard, ranks 15th at 17.5. And sophomore forward Jordan McCallum is right there with him, rounding up to 17.5 in 16th. Furman is the only other team with four players in the top 20, but its representatives are all between 13th and 20th. East Tennessee has the top defense in the conference by points allowed, giving up 69.9 per game in SoCon play. For the season overall, it’s 57th in Division I. The issue is that the offense is nowhere near as good, which makes ETSU vulnerable. It did lose five games in conference play and all. That’s just kind of how it goes in Southern, however. Mercer, which finished in a three-way tie for second at 11-7 in SoCon play, leads in points scored at 82.5 per game, but gives up 76.9 per game. Those figures rank first and fifth in the conference, and an impressive 43rd in D-I… canceled out by 232nd overall for the latter. Everyone is vulnerable and able to be exploited, basically, even the good ones. Southern - Women’s College Basketball Leaders: There are just eight women’s basketball teams in Southern, as The Citadel and VMI do not sponsor the sport. What that means is that there are no byes at all, and no play-in round: the first round is a quarterfinal, the second the semis and then it’s championship time. Instead, the matchups are standard top seed vs. bottom seed, and so on down the line. Top-seed Chattanooga will face 8-seed Western Carolina, 2-seed East Tennessee goes up against 7-seed UNC Greensboro, 3-seed Wofford takes on 6-seed Samford and 4-seed Furman matches up against 5-seed Mercer. The winner of the first game faces the winner of the fourth game in the semis, to continue to give the top seed — if still there — as much of an edge as possible as a reward. Like with the men’s side, none of these teams are near the bubble. And in fact, the women’s teams are even further away. Chattanooga is the top team in NET, but comes in at 208 of 363. Wofford is next at 226, ETSU at 247, Furman 251. Mercer (258), UNC Greensboro (274) and Samford (295) are the rest of the bunch within the top 300; Western Carolina trails, way back, at 352, just outside of the bottom-10 in Division I women’s basketball. It didn’t win a single game against fellow Division I schools, going 0-25 in those games and 3-0 against non-D-I teams. The lesson to take from this — Western Carolina aside — isn’t that this conference struggles with women’s basketball, but to recognize that these teams are all tightly packed together in terms of ability. Just about anything could go down in the SoCon tournament because of it. Caia Elisaldez might be leading both Chattanooga and the Southern Conference in scoring, but she’s not the top player on her team per PER. That spot belongs to Chattanooga’s sophomore forward Gianna Corbitt, at 31.7 — she’s the only player in the conference over 30. Corbitt has the top Plus/Minus and Offensive Rating in SoCon, but she’s also first in the conference in Defensive Rating. Elisaldez is fifth in PER, too — the two make quite the duo, and are why Chattanooga is tops in the conference even if it isn’t a powerhouse outside of it. The Mocs are also here because they are the most balanced team in the Southern Conference: they rank second in both points allowed per game and points scored during conference play, 54.6 and 62.1. Those figures should also serve as a reminder of what you already read above, however: that is not a significant gap between scoring and opponent scoring. If Chattanooga is the best that SoCon got, the tournament is wide open.