Big South seedings set: Where did the Lancers land?
Published 2:57 pm Monday, March 4, 2024
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The seedings are set, the games are scheduled and now we know what the Big South Men’s Basketball Tournament will look like. Held this year on the campus of High Point University in High Point, North Carolina, regular season champion High Point (13-3) will have a bit of a home field advantage.
As for the rest of the field, defending champion UNC Asheville (12-4) is the No. 2 seed, with Gardner-Webb finishing 11-5 for the No. 3 slot. Winthrop ended league play in fourth-place at 8-8 and will be No. 4. Longwood, Presbyterian and Charleston Southern all tied for fifth-place at 6-10. The Lancers earned the No. 5 seed based on their 3-1 season record against PC/CSU, while Presbyterian clinched the No. 6 seed (2-2 vs. LWU/CSU) — the program’s highest-ever seeding in the Big South tournament. Charleston Southern secured the No. 7 spot (1-3 vs. LWU/PC) for the final auto-berth into the quarterfinals.
STARTING THINGS OFF
USC Upstate and Radford tied for eighth in the standings at 5-11, and the Spartans landed the No. 8 seed. The teams split the season series, and the tiebreaker was Upstate’s 1-1 record vs. first-place High Point, compared to Radford’s 0-2 mark vs. HPU. Upstate and Radford will go head-to-head in the first round on Wednesday, March 6 at 8 p.m.
The winner of that game then takes the court on Friday, to play No. 1 High Point at noon. No. 4 Winthrop will take on No. 5 Longwood in the second game of the day, beginning at 2 p.m. No. 2 UNC Asheville will face No. 7 Charleston Southern at 6 p.m. Finally, it’ll be No. 3 Gardner-Webb taking on No. 6 Presbyterian at 8 p.m. Friday.
The semifinals will be Saturday, March 9 at noon and 2 p.m., with the Championship game on Sunday, March 10 scheduled for noon.
HOW CAN I WATCH?
This part’s easy. Most of the conference tournament will be on ESPN+, with the championship broadcast Sunday on ESPN2. A reminder that the Big South tournament champion earns an automatic bid to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.