The standard is back in Johnson City. In 2025-26, the East Tennessee State Buccaneers went 23-11 overall and 13-5 in the Southern Conference, claiming the SoCon regular-season championship and reminding everyone that the league's most decorated program had reclaimed its seat at the head of the table. For head coach Brooks Savage, in his third season on the bench, it was the breakthrough that his rebuild had been building toward — a year when the Buccaneers played like a team that expected to win every night and usually did.
That expectation is the program's inheritance. ETSU was the Southern Conference's 1990s powerhouse, ripping off four straight NCAA Tournament trips from 1989 through 1992, a run that made Johnson City a March fixture and turned the Buccaneers into the team nobody wanted to see in their bracket. The high-water mark came in 1992, when a 14th-seeded ETSU squad stunned No. 3 Arizona 87-80 in the first round — then stood toe to toe with Michigan's Fab Five for 40 minutes in the second round before falling 102-90, a game that announced the Bucs to America. Four dances in four years, mountain pride, a national near-miss — in East Tennessee, that era is still legend.
The magic came back once already in the modern era. Steve Forbes took over in 2015 and built a monster: an NCAA Tournament berth in 2017 — a 27-win team that shared the SoCon regular-season crown — and the 2020 team that rolled to a school-record 30 wins and the SoCon championship before COVID-19 wiped out the tournament and stole what might have been the program's deepest run. Forbes's Bucs played with an edge — physical, relentless, the team everyone in the league loved to hate — and Freedom Hall rocked like it was the '90s again.
Then came the wilderness. Forbes left for Wake Forest in 2020, Jason Shay lasted a single 13-12 season, and the Desmond Oliver years sputtered to a 27-37 mark over two seasons. By March 2023 the program needed a reset. Athletic director Dr. Richard Sander turned to a familiar face: Brooks Savage, a former Forbes assistant at ETSU for five seasons who had spent the previous two years on Forbes's staff at Wake Forest. Savage knew the standard. He knew Johnson City. And he went to work.
The 2025-26 season was the payoff. The Bucs opened eyes early, hung tough on the road, and ground through the SoCon slate with the kind of veteran poise Savage had been cultivating since day one. A 76-75 thriller at Samford in January showed the team's nerve — winning a one-possession game in a hostile gym is the kind of thing championship teams do. February brought separation: convincing wins over Wofford and VMI at Freedom Hall, and by the time the dust settled, ETSU stood alone atop the league at 13-5.
Cam Morris III was the heartbeat of it all. The guard gave the Bucs a shot-maker in every big moment, the kind of lead guard championship teams are built around. Blake Barkley was the two-way engine — his 26-point, 11-rebound eruption at Samford was the individual performance of the season — while Jordan McCullum, Brian Taylor II and Allen Strothers formed a core that defended, rebounded and shared the ball. Jaylen Smith and Maki Johnson provided spark off the bench, and Milton Matthews III rounded out a rotation with no weak links.
The identity was unmistakably Savage: defend like your scholarship depends on it, rebound everything, and make the other team feel every one of the 40 minutes. The Bucs didn't blow many teams out — they strangled them, a half-court style built for March when the possessions get precious and the whistles get swallowed.
Freedom Hall Civic Center remains one of the SoCon's great home-court advantages. The 6,500-seat arena in Johnson City has seen everything from the '90s dynasty to the Forbes revival, and last season it got its roar back. Visiting teams don't just play the Bucs in Freedom Hall; they play the building, the noise, and fifty years of mountain basketball history.
The SoCon grind never lets up. Chattanooga, Furman and UNC Greensboro remain annual threats, Samford and Wofford reload every year, and the league's parity means the regular-season crown guarantees nothing — everything gets settled in Asheville in March, where the Bucs have historically been at their most dangerous. That's the duality of this program: the league title is the goal, but the tournament is the mission.
Which is what makes 2026-27 so compelling. Savage enters his fourth season with a program that has climbed from reset to regular-season champion, and the expectation has shifted from building to finishing. The portal era means the roster will churn, but the culture — the edge, the defense, the Johnson City pride — is now the program's foundation. The pieces will be new. The standard isn't.
What defines East Tennessee State is the tournament pedigree: four straight dances in the '90s, the Fab Five classic, the Forbes resurgence, and now a SoCon regular-season title that says the Bucs are back on top of the league they once owned. In Johnson City, every season is measured against March. The next dance is the mission, and the mountain pride never wavers.