The automatic bids for the NCAA tournament keep on coming and the 4th automatic bid comes one of the most competitive low major conferences this season. The Atlantic Sun conference is where this automatic bid comes from and it goes to the Lipscomb Bisons. The Bisons have always had competitive teams but don’t have much tradition and have found it hard to make the NCAA tournament. That is often how things go in a one-bid league.
Lipscomb has qualified for its second NCAA Tournament in school history and the first one for current head coach Lennie Acuff. Lipscomb made the NCAA tournament the last time in the 2017-2018 season. They head into tournament play with a 25-9 overall record and finished 14-4 in the Atlantic Sun regular season. Lipscomb was able to complete the season sweep of the league with a win in the conference title game over North Alabama. The 25 wins is the second most for the Bisons.
Lipscomb is likely going to be around the 13 seed line, and that seed line has seen numerous upsets over the years. Can the Bison be the next team to pull off an upset? They do have the team to get over the hump, but everything in the NCAA tournament always depends on the matchups. The Bisons have a chance, and here are the reasons why.
Jacob Ognacevic
Take a bow, Jacob Ognacevic 👑#IntoTheStorm ⛈️ | #HornsUp 🤘 pic.twitter.com/rwBfyNsTOo
— Lipscomb Men's Basketball (@LipscombMBB) March 4, 2025
If Lipscomb wins, Ognacevic is always going to be a reason why. The big man is one of the best players in the country, and my guess is that most people have no idea who he is, nor have they watched him play a game. He does everything for Lipscomb. It is more than doing everything for the Bisons, but Ognacevic takes over games and can flat out dominate. His 20.1 points and 8.1 rebounds suggest just that. The senior is different than most guys who average those types of numbers because he isn’t a volume shooter. He is extremely efficient and shoots almost 60% from the floor.
That is impressive for any player, but then when you add in that he is a 40% three-point shooter with well over 100 attempts from deep, and with his ability to get to the line over 200 times, it makes it all the more impressive. Ognacevic will be the center of every single scouting report for Lipscomb, but stopping him is a different story. If he can dominate the Bisons have a great chance of winning a game.
The Little Things
Coaches will always tell you that it's the little things you do that lead to winning; the problem always is that their team doesn’t do enough of the little things to win games. Lipscomb is the opposite of that. They do the little things that lead to winning, and they do them well. Coach Acuff has coached his guys to not foul and still play fantastic defense. They average 12 fouls per game, which is one of the best marks in the country. Only two teams commit fewer fouls in the country. Lipscomb rarely turns it over and commits less than 10 turnovers per game, which is one of the 25 best numbers in the country.
So they don’t turn it over, and they don’t foul, and when it comes time to close games out, the Bison shoot just under 80% from the free throw line as a team. All of these things may seem small, but they are all things that lead to winning and what could separate the Bison from winning and losing. Their opponent can’t rely on Lipscomb to beat themselves because they hardly ever do that.
Strength on the three-point line
Every game Lipscomb plays, the three-point line comes into play. The Bisons take a lot of threes, about 47% of their shots come from beyond the three point arc. Lipscomb makes them at 36%, and when the Bisons play defense, they actively try to run teams off the three-point line. They only allow opponents to take 38% of their shots from downtown. Something has to give, though. Will the Bison be able to make enough threes to stay in the game against a power conference school? Will the strategy of running teams off the line work against a team that has better big men? The strategy has worked for Lipscomb so far, and if they can get going from three, they will win.
Lipscomb isn’t a household name, and most casual fans have no idea who they are. The Bisons do have the ability to be the ultimate sleeper because of that, and that makes them a dangerous team when the brackets come out. Lipscomb could be a team to watch out for to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.