It’s not that Wofford basketball coach Mike Young isn’t appreciative of having his No. 24 Terriers earning a Top 25 ranking for the first time in school history heading into Thursday night’s game against the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga at McKenzie Arena.
He freely admits that the ranking is “really cool.” And that moving forward past this season, to summer recruiting and autumn season ticket sales, “This is significant. We’ve got it all now. (Our arena) is the nicest there is at this level. It’s a big deal for our recruiting.”
But as happy as he is, it comes with an asterisk the size of a 10-ton boulder.
“Chattanooga on Thursday is the only thing that matters,” he said by cellphone Tuesday afternoon. “We can’t take our foot off the pedal. We can’t blink. One loss, especially in the Southern Conference tournament, could change everything.”
Before you think Young is paranoid, that he doesn’t fully appreciate the impressiveness of his 16-0 league mark heading into the UTC game, or the Terriers’ 24-4 overall record, or their ridiculously easy margin of victory of 16 points per game in SoCon games, or ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi’s current prediction of Wofford as a No. 8 seed come March Madness, listen to his recall of the 2015 NCAA tourney selection process.