The Buccaneer men’s basketball team heads into this weekends Southern Conference tournament not as the No. 1 seed, but as the hottest team in the conference.
The Bucs are riding an eight-game winning streak that tied them with Davidson and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro atop the SoCon North Division. It is the second straight year that ETSU has finished on top of the North Division.
With all the ups and downs that have plagued the Bucs’ season, the team has managed to play its best basketball at the right time and leads the SoCon in scoring at 81.7 points per game.
“We talked with the players about keeping positive attitudes and keep working hard . and good things can happen,” said head coach Ed DeChellis. “I’m very, very proud of them.”
ETSU (18-9, 11-5) began its conference schedule with a 3-5 record, which included four road losses and a loss to Chattanooga in the Mini-Dome on Jan. 26, breaking ETSU’s 18-game home winning streak. The Bucs then began their current winning streak with a 96-77 victory over VMI on Jan. 30 and have not lost since.
“We have some kids that are real competitors on this team and have some kids that really hate to lose,” DeChellis said. “We never accepted losing.”
DeChellis also points to losses at Davidson and their only home loss of the season versus Chattanooga as key points that were instrumental in the Bucs’ turnaround.
“The Chattanooga loss, somehow deep down inside helped us . that point on the team’s mind set was no one was going to beat us here again. They started to believe they could be a good basketball team,” he said.
Even with how hot the Bucs have been recently, DeChellis knows anything can happen in the tournament as his team learned last season. ETSU entered last year’s tournament the No. 1 seed with their conference-best record of 13-3 and lost in its opening game against Georgia Southern.
“Tournaments are funny in terms of you lose one game, you’re done,” DeChellis said. “You have someone not play well, an important piece of the puzzle doesn’t play well . you can get stung. Tournaments are a roll of the dice.”
ETSU enters this year’s tournament not only being led by Southern Conference Player of the Year Dimeco Childress, who ranks fourth in the SoCon in scoring (17.6), but also has three other players scoring in double figures in sophomores Zakee Wadood (14.9), Jerald Fields (13.4) and freshman Tiras Wade (11.3).
Junior Ryan Lawson has also shown that he can light it up on any night, scoring 32 points against Western Carolina on Feb. 4 and averaging just under 10 points (9.3).
“We’ve had different players step up on every night,” DeChellis said. “Meco has stepped up several times and had big games, but Zakee will step up, Jerald will step up, Ryan Lawson on the road against Western had a monster game for us, Tiras has come in at times and had a big rebound a big basket when we needed it.
“Maybe we haven’t had guys play well throughout the game, but when we needed to make a play . someone has been there to make it and that has been critical to our success.”
With a three-way tie atop both division, Davidson, ETSU, UNC-G in the North and Georgia Southern, Chattanooga and College of Charleston in the South all at 9-7, DeChellis feels the tournament champion could come from one of those six teams, but also knows every team will be dangerous.
“I think it will be one of those six teams that probably has the best odds to win the tournament,” DeChellis said. “Greensboro is very talented . Georgia Southern is talented, College of Charleston is talented, Chattanooga is talented.
“I think it is the most wide open tournament I’ve ever been involved with and that will make it pretty fun.”
The Bucs will play the winner of Thursday’s College of Charleston/Appalachian State game on Friday night and will be focused for whichever team wins even if it means playing College of Charleston, which will be playing in its hometown.
“We’ll be focused to play whoever we play . we look forward to playing on Friday night,” DeChellis said. “If its College of Charleston I look forward to playing them on their home turf . I think we can beat anyone in the league.”
Notes: Dimeco Childress is currently ranked eighth on the ETSU all-time scoring list with 1,271 points.
Childress trails Mike Kretzer, who scored 1,289 points playing for ETSU from 1968-1970, by 18 points for seventh on the all-time list.
Childress has scored 475 points this season for ETSU.

Author