It All Comes Down to This: WBB Travels to Macon, Georgia with Season Title on the Line

The easiest path (at least, statistically speaking) to become the SOCON's automatic qualifier will be decided tonight as the Samford Bulldogs make the return visit to the Mercer Lady Bears tonight. The two squads met to open the conference season all the way back on January 9th in Birmingham where Samford won 78-69. In that game, the difference was Samford's ability to take and make free throws as each team hit the exact same number of 2 point shots and 3 point shots, while Samford attempted 5 more free throws and sunk a total of 9 more than their counterpart. Samford won the rebounding battle in a big way on that day, finishing +14 in the department on the day. Annie Ramil led the charge for the Bulldogs, scorching the Lady Bears for 28 points and 15 rebounds, both of which were the most of any player. Ramil would be awarded SOCON Player of the Week honors after this performance.

Coming into today's game, Samford and Mercer are at the top of the Points Scored category, with Samford scoring an average of 70.8 points in conference play and Mercer right behind averaging 65.6 per game. Samford and Mercer are right together for points allowed per game with Samford averaging 57.6 while Mercer sits at 58.5. For most of the stats Samford and Mercer are joined at the hip. However, the biggest separations between the two squads are 3 point defense where Samford only allows a league leading 22.7% of deep shots to fall while Mercer sits in 6th sporting a 30.1% 3 point defense. Samford takes and makes the 3 at a much higher clip than the Lady Bears. Samford averages just over 18 3 point attempts during conference play, hitting 6.8 a game, while Mercer takes only 11.5 a game and makes a league worst 3.5 3 point shots per conference game.

Mercer will have their hands full as they try to take down the 3 headed monster of Ramil, Cournoyer, and Armstrong. During the last meeting, Mercer was able to limit Armstrong's performance, holding her to only 9 points and 6 rebounds. However, this opened the door for Ramil to step in and take control of the game. And this isn't to discredit Cournoyer's performance as she had a successful day at the office, dropping 16 points and keeping her hands active, resulting in 5 cookies. Plus, fellow starters Hampton and Omar are quality players who can cause real damage if the defense overlooks them. Add to this the contributions of Senior Katie Allen and her hair on fire defense and her ability to knock down the corner 3 off the catch and shoot, and fellow Senior Makalia Woolard who has pulled down 76 rebounds this season and has 11 steals to her name.

At the same time, Mercer boasts two of the best players in the conference with Shannon Titus and Jaron Dougherty leading the Lady Bear attack. The two combined for 45 of Mercer's 69 points during the last meetup. Titus was named the preseason player of the year for the conference, with Dougherty joining her as Mercer's two players named to the preseason All-Conference team.

Keys to the Game:

1 Limit Turnovers

This key has been on here every week since the start of this site and it'll be here until the end of time. Samford has struggled with turning the ball over, averaging 16.33 a game for the season and 14.58 during conference play. Mercer, by comparison, is very good at not turning the ball over, leading the league with a + 7.7 margin. Samford is 3rd in the league with a +0.33 margin in league play. We cannot afford to give the Lady Bears extra opportunities to score, especially at their own arena.

2. Win the Rebounding Battle

Again, this key has been here since the start and like key numero uno, it ain't going nowhere. Mercer has a very good offense and we can't allow them to get an extra shot or three. While Mercer currently has a -0.9 rebounding margin during conference play, that's up from a -2.9 margin from just one week ago. In both games against Wofford last week, Mercer won the rebound battle in both games. Keep in mind that Wofford is one of the better teams in the league at rebounding.

3 Keep the Crowd Out of the Game

Some schools are football schools (Alabama), others are baseball schools (Vanderbilt). Mercer is a basketball school without a doubt. During last year's meh season for the Lady Bears (8-23, 4-10), the team got over 20,000 fans to attend their games, averaging 1,472 per game. By comparison, Samford only attracted 3,066 fans for the entire season, averaging 279 per game. Obviously there won't be 1,472 people at the game tonight as Mercer is averaging just over 400 people per game this season. However, this is almost double of what Samford is accustomed to here in Birmingham. If this game is close going into the final couple of minutes, it could spell trouble for the Bulldogs.

Tournament Implications

The winner of this game gets the early games for the tournament in Asheville next week while the loser gets the 2:30 Central. While some might think that losing might be better, I would remind them that Women's Basketball is less prone to upsets than Men's Basketball. Being able to play the 8 seed and then either the 4 or 5 seed is a much easier path than playing the 7 seed and then either the 3 seed or the 6 seed. Plus, being the 1 seed means that you get to stay in the same locker room for the entire stay. While this is a very small thing, why would you want to mess with anything when you know that you have the biggest game of the year ahead of you?

Currently, the standings are as follows:

1. Samford

2. Mercer 0.5 GB

3. Chattanooga 2.5 GB

4. Wofford 3.5 GB

5. UNCG 5.5 GB

6. Furman 5.5 GB

7. WCU 7 GB

8. ETSU 7.5 GB

Chattanooga and Wofford are locked into their position and UNCG and Furman can only switch positions, same goes for WCU and ETSU. While Mercer does have one more game this coming Saturday against ETSU, the only way for either Samford or Mercer to win the regular season is by winning tonight. A Samford win tonight would give the Bulldogs a 1.5 game lead, while a Mercer win would give the Lady Bears a 0.5 game advantage. Even if Mercer lost to ETSU, they would still hold the top spot as they swept Wofford while Samford split their season's series with the Terriers

Photo taken by Chase Cochran