Conference tournament season has arrived in full in college hoops, with smaller conferences wrapping up tournaments and the major conferences getting set to begin, which means we are being treated with the return of crazy finishes and buzzer-beaters to send teams to the Big Dance.
On Monday night, Chattanooga and Furman met in the SoCon championship game in Asheville, North Carolina in a battle between the two top teams in the conference, with just one of them getting to advance to the NCAA Tournament (SoCon has never sent two teams to the NCAA). It was a wild game that saw Chattanooga go ice cold in the first half, trailing 26-16 in a rock fight at the break. A 13-0 run in the early second half put the Mocs up and they would seemingly take control of the game by the middle of the second half, but could never truly break away from Furman.
After going up three in the closing seconds, Furman’s Mike Bothwell drilled a stepback three after the Mocs didn’t see their coach calling for them to foul up three, sending the game to overtime. In the OT period, Furman started a perfect 4-for-4 from the field and twice took a three-point lead, but Chattanooga found timely three-point shots to tie the game, including with inside 30 seconds to play. Furman would take the ball and Bothwell scored his 23rd and 24th points of the night on a drive to the bucket to seemingly send the Paladins to the Tournament with 4.3 seconds to play. However, David Jean-Baptiste had one more prayer left for the Mocs that went answered at the buzzer, creating pandemonium in Asheville.
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1501017267320012800
It is the ultimate thrill of victory and agony of defeat moment, as Bothwell collapses to the floor after putting up a herculean effort to get the Paladins into overtime and into the lead, while Jean-Baptiste gets swarmed by teammates (and Mocs fans who made the trek to Asheville) on the court.
