After what has been another historic season for UNC Greensboro men’s basketball, the Spartans fell short of a second straight conference title Monday night, placing second in the 2019 Ingles Southern Conference Championship presented by General Shale.
UNCG fell 70-58 to Wofford, the No. 20 team in the country, despite leading for more than 33 minutes. The Spartans finished regular season and conference tournament play with a 28-6 overall record, setting a new program record for wins in a season.
“I’ve got an amazing team,” said Head Coach Wes Miller. “I’m as proud of my guys tonight as I’ve ever been, even though the result isn’t what we wanted it to be. I thought our guys competed. We executed a very different game plan than we’ve played all year without any practice time and a really short prep. We played our guys a lot of heavy minutes the last three days and our kids kept fighting. They’ve done it all year.”
“They are a championship caliber team, but we just came up a little bit short tonight,” Miller said.
Monday’s title game marked the third straight SoCon championship game appearance for Miller’s squad. In 2017, the Spartans fell short to East Tennessee State, and then earned a bid to the National Invitation Tournament. Last year, UNCG beat East Tennessee State in the SoCon title game, earning its first NCAA Tournament bid since 2001.
The Spartans will now have to wait until the weekend to find out their fate for postseason play. While the SoCon has never had a team earn an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, Miller advocated for the conference and his team during Monday night’s post-game press conference.
“We have a top-20 team in the nation; they’ve played like it all year. And we’ve got a couple other dang good teams. And we’ve got one here,” Miller said. “I think we have an unbelievable resume to get in the tournament.”
To read more, visit uncgspartans.com.
