This Dog Will Woff(ord)

Wofford vs. Furman, 7:00 ET

Wofford vs. Furman, 7:00 ET

It is over, my friends. The regular season of College Basketball has come to an and and now we have nothing but conference tournaments, and, of course, the NCAA Tournament. This is the time of the year where you’ll see everyone have opinions about college basketball and everyone will fill out a bracket. All I will suggest is that you be extremely cautious about who you listen to about these games. There are a lot of people who don’t pay attention to it then start writing about it because they are assigned it because of the time of year. I’ve been writing about College Basketball all season and put together a good year. Let’s get started on a conference tournament championship game between Wofford and Furman. 

Wofford isn’t a team that you’re probably very familiar with. They also are not a team that you’re probably going to spend a lot of time flipping through channels to see play. Wofford comes into this one with an 18-15 record for the season, and they are just 10-8 in conference play. This is the SoCon Championship game, so how did Wofford get here? Most recently, they’ve beaten East Tennessee State and VMI in back-to-back games before this. During the season, they split the series against VMI, and they did the same with East Tennessee State. Wouldn’t you know it, they did the same with their games against Furman. What I think is interesting about Wofford is that they were 3-6 on their home court. That left them 7-2 on the road. With these games all on neutral courts, this actually bodes well for Wofford. They are the rare team that actually seems to play better when they are away from their home court. 

Nov 30, 2024; Lawrence, Kansas, USA; Kansas Jayhawks guard Dajuan Harris Jr. (3) shoots the ball against Furman Paladins guard Nick Anderson (7) during the second half at Allen Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images

Furman is not a very well-known school with, but they have put together a better record this season than tonight’s opponent. For the year, Furman is 25-8 and they went 11-7 in conference play. In order to get to the championship, they had to first face Samford, and they made light work of them. The next game was much more of a challenge as they beat Chattanooga. While it was a win, they won in overtime by three points. The biggest issue was free throws as they missed too many which gave Chattanooga a chance to capture the win in the game. Prior to this tournament, they won their last four games of the regular season, with two of them being within five points. They haven’t been consistently better on the road or at home. They lost four games on the road and three at home to conference opponents. 

With both of these teams, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to why or when they lose. Sometimes teams are better in certain situations, but neither really seem to make a ton of sense. In this game the best thing to do is to look at the past two matchups between them. Wofford dominated them in the first matchup, beating them by 19 points. All of that came in the first half of that game. Furman hit just 23.5% from deep in that game, and they hit just 33.3% from the floor overall. In the second game, the numbers were swapped. Furman hit 40% from beyond the arc and Wofford hit just 26.7% from the arc. In that one, they still just lost by three points. In this third iteration, I think Wofford wins the game. I think they are probably the better team. They play well on the road, and in both games there were a lot of signs that showed them being the better team. Back Wofford.