Samford Heads to SOCON. What to Expect + Several Bulldogs Recognized for Season Play

The Women's team made the 6 hour trip up to Asheville,North Carolina on Tuesday while the Men waited for another day to board their bus bound North East from Samford University. The Women will open the entire shebang tomorrow as they face off against 8 seed ETSU at 11am Central. The Men get their first taste of the SoCon Tournament under the direction of Coach Bucky the next night as they do battle against the 8 seed Mercer Bears (Friday's tip is scheduled for 7pm Central). The two Samford teams enter the tournament at complete opposite ends of the spectrum with the men earning the lowest seed on the Men's side while the Women get the easiest path forward as they were given the top seed by way of winning the regular season title. Also, the Men's team has just gone through its 2nd round of inaction of the season after another COVID outbreak affected the team, canceling the team's final 3 games of the season.

Awards and Recognition

Samford's going to need a bigger trophy case after this season with all of the awards and recognitions given to the program and to individual players this season. Earlier this week, Senior Center Natalie Armstrong was named as this past week's Player of the Week after posting 24 points and 8 rebounds last week in the game against Mercer. This selection marked the 6th time this season and 5th time this calendar year that a Samford player was given this recognition. The next day was a busy one for the Samford Social Media team as they had to create more than a few graphics for the season awards given to Samford's players and staff.

Neither the coaches nor the media could sing the praises of Andrea Cournoyer enough, as they both named her Player of the Year and First Team All Conference, as well as the coaches naming her to the All defensive team. Natalie Armstrong joined Cournoyer on both the coach and media First team All Conference with Annie Ramil earning Second team honors.

In just her second year in the conference, coach Kuhns was given the recognition she so richly deserved and was named as the Coach of the Year by both the media and her fellow coaches. Coach Kuhns currently has the best conference win percentage (77.8%)

Keys to the Game

1 Win the Rebounding Battle

It's déjà vu all over again. ETSU is still decent at rebounding and rebounding plays a very important role in determining the winner of a contest. Plus, Samford has not lost a game this entire season when winning the rebounding battle (the Bulldogs are 4-7 when being out rebounded). Let's not tempt fate by letting the Buccaneers hang around because we suddenly forget how to box out.

2 Limit Turnovers

I've seen this one before... Even as that may be, it's still good advice. Samford has struggled with the turnover bug all season, averaging 16 pastries per game and 14.5 in conference play. The last time these two squads met, ETSU got 17 points off of Bulldog turnovers. Not great. The first game of a tournament is hard. Not always because the team is playing stiff competition, but because of all of the nerves and jitters. Knowing that you're playing for the automatic qualifier (and for small conferences like the SOCON, the only way to get to March Madness) can be daunting. We need to focus on the basics and build from there.

3 Don't let the Stage get to You

Finally! An original Key! Going back to back Regular Season Championships and being the defending SOCON Champion puts a major target on your back. Sometimes you'll see teams look past the opening round and have one eye on the next round. That's when upsets happen. When I played baseball, our program had three sayings: 1. Pound the strike zone, 2. Have a quality at bat, 3. Dominate the routine play. When you dominate the routine, you let nothing in your control get away from you and you reduce the risk of the weird. You don't glove pat 20 times, you field the ball and get it to the first baseman on target and on time. As it relates to the tournament and the Women's team, we need to do the little things like rebound and keep possession of the ball (now where have I head that before?). We just need to put our foot on their neck and don't let off until the clock shows triple zeros after the fourth quarter. No one wants ETSU to be the UMBC of the SOCON Tournament.

Photo taken by Chase Cochran