The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team has won its past nine games, and pushing that number to 10 is about more than extending a streak or finishing off an undefeated February with an eighth win in the second month of the year.
UTC plays Thursday night at UNC Greensboro, with tipoff set for 7 p.m. in North Carolina, and it’s a game with huge implications for the Southern Conference as the visiting Mocs try to secure a split of the regular-season series with UNCG after losing 78-75 to the Spartans on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer Jan. 9 in Chattanooga.
With a win in the rematch, the Mocs (21-8, 13-3) will secure the program’s first regular-season championship since 2022 and would be the top seed in next week’s conference tournament in Asheville, North Carolina.
If UTC loses, it would put the Spartans (19-10, 12-4) in the driver’s seat for the top seed (by virtue of sweeping the Mocs) heading into Saturday’s regular-season finales. Even in that scenario, UTC could still take the title and the top seed if it were to win at Virginia Military Institute (13-16, 7-9) and if UNCG were to lose to Samford (21-8, 11-5). Samford, currently third in the 10-team league standings, visits seventh-place VMI on Thursday night ahead of Saturday’s finales.
On top of everything else, it’s important to remember that the SoCon’s automatic bid for next month’s 68-team NCAA tournament comes not from winning the league’s regular-season title but the one awarded in Asheville.