Thoughts from the SoCon Tournament (Day 1)

Just returned from an exciting afternoon at the North Charleston Coliseum where Wofford knocked off Western Carolina by a score of 58-49 in the opening game of the Men's Tournament. That result means the Wildcats will face the Terriers in a 2 p.m. tip tomorrow afternoon in Quarterfinal action.

-Western Carolina put up a fierce fight despite being outrageously undermanned. Coach Hunter only used seven players throughout the contest with the seventh only logging 7 minutes. The Catamounts were without the services of All-Conference star Brandon Giles who was injured in the final stretch of the conference season.

-Wofford's Noah Dahlman put up an impressive line of 16 points and five offensive rebounds. Dahlman averaged just 7.7 points per game during the regular season. That difference can largely be seen in Western's inability to be aggressive on the defensive boards. With at least three players in foul trouble for most of the second half, the Catamounts conceded to Dahlman's aggressiveness and the Wofford forward made them pay.

-Wofford's star guards Drew Gibson and Shane Nichols shot a combined 1-8 from three land but small forward Corey Godzinski helped the team's outside production by hitting several uncontested threes. Gibson did an excellent job distributing the ball as he finished with eight assists.

-Although there weren't too many fans for this game, there were plenty of notables in the stands. Former Citadel and CofC coaches Pat Dennis and John Kresse were sitting rows from each other. Current SoCon coaches John Shulman and Houston Fancher were seen bantering in a corner of the lower bowl. Shulman seemed to get along with Fancher's son pretty well.

-There was great discussion among the Davidson fans there over the SoCon's treatment of tomorrow's back-to-back Davidson games. Technically, the women's and men's games are in two different sessions which means that Wildcat fans at the women's game would be forced outside to be reticketed for the men's game. Under those circumstances, most Wildcat fans would just as soon skip the women's game to get at the front of the line for the men's game to get good seats. This would look bad on the conference to be effectively discouraging support of women's basketball. There's still no definitive word on the chinese fire drill to come, but it is something to think about when making plans tomorrow.