The Golden Eagles welcome the Catamounts to Fiserv Forum for the last buy game type contest of the season.
Name: Western Carolina University
Location: Cullowhee, North Carolina
That wasn’t exactly helpful. Cullowhee is about an hour’s drive southwest through the Smoky Mountains from Asheville. Well, it’s an hour if you take I-40, it’s two hours if you take the Blue Ridge Parkway. Might be a nicer view on the latter one.
Ok, where’s Asheville, smart guy? As Andrew Rowsey will tell you, it’s the western most major city in North Carolina. You know how North Carolina kind of looks like a parallelogram? Asheville is in the bottom left corner, and Cullowhee is even further southwest into the corner.
Wasn’t Asheville badly affected by Hurricane Helene? It definitely did take a bad hit from the weather and its assorted effects. That’s why I’ve had this charity drive post pinned to the top of the front page of the website ever since. If you have a few spare bucks lying around, I highly recommend picking a service operation on the list in there and helping them out. I’m sure that they could still use the help even now almost two months later.
Founded: WCU traces their history back to the introduction of Cullowhee Academy in 1889, but as I read the explanation, it sounds like it wasn’t really what you would call a college or university at that point. In 1893, the North Carolina legislature started funding Cullowhee Academy to provide for the training of teachers, and then the state assumed control of the operation in 1905. They didn’t get the Western Carolina name until it became a four year college in 1929, and university status didn’t come along until 1967. It took until 1972 for the legislature to bring it within the operation of the University of North Carolina system, which seems wild.
Pride of the Mountains: WCU has a marching band, nicknamed Pride of the Mountains. The band website says that membership is “almost 500 members” at this point, which sounds like it’s pretty big for a marching band. Here they are at the 2023 SCBDA 5A State Finals as an exhibition performance (presumably so the judges can tabulate the scorecards for the high school bands):
That’s better than O-Fest: WCU’s yearly “hey, all the campus organizations and departments and so on are out at a table, come learn things and join things” event is named Valley Ballyhoo. I don’t have anything to say here other than I like the word ballyhoo.
Enrollment: 11,686 students as of Fall 2024, with 10,123 undergraduates…. at least if I did my math right.
Shouts to the state of North Carolina: Because of a program called NC Promise Tuition Plan, all undergraduate students hailing from the great state of North Carolina pay [drumroll] $500 a semester to attend WCU. That’s just tuition, there’s still fees, and housing, and meals and so on. However, WCU is devoted to dragging that down even further, and they have something called Catamount Commitment. If you have at least a 3.65 GPA in high school, then you can earn $1,000, $2,000, or $3,000 per year from WCU to defray your costs even further.
Nickname: Catamounts
Why “Catamounts?” Via what was at CatamountSports.com, the official WCU athletics page, at one point in 2016 and now mysteriously disappeared, but now helpfully archived on Wikipedia:
The nickname evolved from a contest that was held on the Cullowhee campus in 1933. At the time, the school was called “Western Carolina Teachers College” and its teams were known as “the Teachers.”
Everyone on campus was invited to participate in the naming of the teams. The usual names were suggested — Bears, Indians, Panthers. However, the college wanted an unusual name, a name that few others had and that everyone would not copy.
The contest came down to Mountain Boomers, a small ground squirrel that scampers about the woods and is extremely difficult to catch, and Catamounts. The latter was the favorite of Head Football Coach C.C. Poindexter and was the nickname chosen. Poindexter wanted his players to be Catamounts with “fierce spirit, savage attacks, and lightning quick moves.”
Typical football, thinking they get to boss everyone else around. Pretty much.
Mountain Boomers would be pretty awesome, wouldn’t it? Oh yeah.
Quick question, though! What IS a Catamount? Oh, it’s just a fancy word for a big wild cat. Pumas, cougars, lynx, bobcats, whatever.
Do you like three point baskets? Then you like Western Carolina. WCU’s Ronnie Carr became the first NCAA player to ever make a three point basket when he drained a jumper with 16:09 left in the first half against Middle Tennessee State on November 29, 1980. It was only an experimental concept at the time, and only the Southern Conference was allowed to use the three pointer that season. The ball that Carr shot for that historic basket is on display at the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Notable Alumni: Academy Award winning actress Ariana DeBose; comedian Rich Hall; Henry Logan, who broke the North Carolina collegiate racial barrier in 1964; three time Super Bowl champion David Patten; and humorist and author David Sedaris.
Last Season: 22-10, with an 11-7 record in Southern Conference action. However, their season ended when they lost in overtime to a Furman team that went 10-8 in the league in WCU’s first SoCon tournament game.
Final 2023-24 KenPom.com Ranking: #110
Final 2023-24 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #112
2024-25 Preseason Poll: Western Carolina was picked to finish eighth in the 10 team SoCon this season. Yes, that does feel like a big drop from a team that went 22-10 last year, we’ll get to it.
So Far This Season: 2-3, with a 0-3 record against Division 1 teams, and that includes a 67-54 road loss to a Queens University team out of the ASUN that is themselves 3-4 on the year.
Current KenPom.com Ranking: #295
Current BartTorvik.com Ranking: #257
Returning Stats Leaders
Points: Bernard Pelote, 6.7 ppg
Rebounds: Bernard Pelote, 4.5 rpg
Assists: Bernard Pelote, 0.2 apg
Starting to get the picture on that preseason poll, huh?
Current Stats Leaders
Points: Chevalier Emery, 14.2 ppg
Rebounds: Bernard Pelote, 8.0 rpg
Assists: Chevalier Emery, 2.2 apg
Bigs? Vernon Collins is a 6’10”, 224 pound junior transfer from Princeton. Yes, he’s from North Carolina, but he’s from the literal other end of the state, so it’s not like he’s that much closer to home. In any case, he’s already played more minutes this season than he did in his two years with the Tigers combined, and he got his first career start back on Tuesday against Florida State. He went for two points, two rebounds, and three blocks in that one. He’s averaging 6.8 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 1.6 blocks per game in 17 minutes of action.
Brandon White is on this roster, and the Catamounts list him at 6’10” and 250 pounds. He’s a redshirt freshman who was at Texas A&M after being a top 200 prospect coming out of Donda Academy. However, he’s only played three minutes, all of which came in WCU’s 39 point stomping of Bob Jones in their opener.
Chase McKey is 6’10”, but is listed at just 202 pounds. The junior transfer from Marshall is chipping in 4.4 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game, but he’s been getting his 18.6 minutes off the bench with the exception of one of WCU’s non-D1 games. McKey hasn’t scored since that one, either.
Do you want to count Bernard Pelote here because he’s leading the team in rebounding? He’s doing what he can, but at 6’8” and 224 — aka pretty much exactly David Joplin — I don’t know if he qualifies as a “big man.”
Shooters? We’re going to have to unpack WCU’s shooting tendencies a little bit more in the What To Watch, so let’s just stick to numbers here. Chevalier Emery and Cord Stansberry both fire off at least six three-point attempts per game, and both men are passable as shooters so far this season. They’re shooting a nearly identical just-over-32% from behind the arc, but those numbers are slightly elevated by competition against non-Division 1 opponents. Emery is at 28.6% against D1 teams, and Stansberry is at a flat 30%.
Fischer Brown is finding time in his 10 minutes a night to average more than three attempts per game and he’s good to hit at least one at 38.5% right now. Brandon Morgan has started the last three games for the Catamounts, and he’s hitting 53% of his 3.0 attempts per game after a 3-for-4 outing against Florida State on Tuesday. Marcus Kell came off the bench for the first time this season against the Seminoles and missed his only long range attempt of the night to fall to 40% shooting on two attempts a game.
Head Coach: Tim Craft in his first season at Western Carolina after 11 years at Gardner Webb. FUN FACT: Here’s the guy who took over when Chris Holtmann left to become an assistant at Butler! He has a career record of 190-169 after going 188-166 at Gardner Webb, including an NCAA tournament appearance in 2019.
What To Watch For: Okay, let’s unpack Western Carolina’s three-point shooting situation here. As a team, for the entire season, they’re shooting 31% from behind the arc, and on average, they take 32 of their 64 field goal attempts from back there. Yes, that’s 50%. No, that’s not typical for a Tim Craft team as he’s had just one team over 40% in the last eight seasons. As you can tell, they’re not great at it, but you can tolerate 31% from long range if it’s being propped up by some pretty good threats. I think Fischer Brown, Brandon Morgan, and Marcus Kell qualify there, so it’s fine, in the big picture.
However.
Those season-long numbers are propped up by a 38% night against Bob Jones, which isn’t even an NAIA team but in the National Christian College Athletic Association, in their opener and a 40% in their 99-64 win over Truett McConnell, which is an NAIA squad.
In their three games, all losses, to Division 1 opponents, WCU is connecting on just 24.7% of their three-pointers. They are, per KenPom.com, the 12th least accurate shooting team in the country. This is made worse by the fact that they’re shooting under 45% on two-pointers, but that’s a different problem. Swinging back to how often they shoot threes, Western Carolina is letting rip from behind the arc on over 47% of their attempts against D1 teams, and that’s the 37th highest rate in the country. For comparison’s sake: Marquette’s “threes or dunks only, okay, fine, shoot a layup if you have to” offense has the Golden Eagles at #51 in rate.
12th worst at hitting, 37th best at putting it up. These things do not go well together.
I’m not saying that Marquette should play a “sure, shoot it, who cares” type of defense here, but I am saying that they don’t have to be that worried about leaving shooters open….. especially because the Catamounts don’t play that way. They are #306 in the country in assist rate, which is purely “did that made bucket come off a pass, yes or no?” It certainly seems like a game rife with WCU shooting a bunch of contested threes in one-on-one defensive situations, and when Marquette has Stevie Mitchell and Chase Ross to stay with guys…. well, I’m not terribly concerned, y’know?
AND SPEAKING OF MITCHELL AND ROSS, I don’t want to put the burden of expectation on them, but if you see a prop bet on steals for them in this game, feel free to take the over. Western Carolina is turning it over on 25% of their possessions against D1 teams this season. That’s fourth worst in the country according to KenPom.com, and uh, I don’t know if you know this, but Marquette wants to generate at least 32 deflections per game. That goal has led MU to generate a turnover on 25.1% of possessions this season, the fifth best rate in the country.
I’ll keep the offensive outlook for Marquette simple here: Western Carolina is sub-300 in both three-point attempt allowed rate and assist allowed rate. This sounds an awful lot like Marquette shooters are going to be open all game long, doesn’t it?
To review: Western Carolina is struggling to shoot it from everywhere on the floor, they shoot way too many threes for a team that’s bad at them, they only get a shot up on 75% of their possessions anyway, and on defense, they allow way too many threes and passes to an open man. This sounds like a game that plays into every strength that the Golden Eagles have. That’s probably good news as Marquette fights off whatever team-wide illness beset them upon their return from the Bahamas.
All Time Series: Marquette leads 4-0 after picking up a 90-44 victory in November 2016.