The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is the No. 1 seed for this year’s Southern Conference men’s basketball tournament, and coach Dan Earl’s Mocs will try to continue a trend for the event.
In each of the past 10 seasons, a team that either won or shared the SoCon’s regular-season championship has taken the league tournament title as well. Wofford won the tourney as the No. 3 seed in 2014 before the current run began.
UTC won this year’s regular-season championship outright, so if the pattern holds, it will be good news for the Mocs — and allow them to secure a spot in the 68-team field for the NCAA Division I tournament via the SoCon’s automatic bid.
The Mocs (23-8), whose 11-game winning streak is the fourth-longest active run in D-I men’s basketball, won their first regular-season title since 2022 with a 15-3 record in league play to finish two games ahead of runner-up UNC Greensboro.
They’ll begin their quest for three wins in three days at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, North Carolina, by facing eighth-seeded Mercer (14-18) at noon to tip off Saturday’s four-game slate of men’s quarterfinals as the women’s tournament, which started Thursday, gets a one-day break before second-seeded UTC (16-13) faces top-seeded UNCG (24-6) in Sunday’s title game at noon on ESPNU.