Mark Guhne was posing for a picture while holding the Southern Conference coach-of-the-year trophy when two of his golfers drenched him with a cooler full of ice water.

Guhne earned both honors for guiding the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to the 2007 SoCon championship. Since the title was UTC’s first in 20 years, it came as a bit of a surprise to those outside the program.

The 2007-08 Mocs have proven last year’s triumph was no fluke. With that victory and a season of success comes the pressure to repeat, and they have built on it.

UTC has risen from the pack of contenders to overwhelming favorite to retain the crown. The 54-hole conference tournament runs Sunday through Tuesday at the Country Club of South Carolina in Florence.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they’re the favorites, and the rest of us will have to play real well to knock them off,” Georgia Southern coach Larry Mays said of the Mocs. “We will have to play our best to win.”

Mays’ Eagles were the 2006 champions.

UTC has grown from being the hunter to the hunted — not only in the SoCon but across the Southeast — in a little over a year. The 12th-ranked Mocs are 59 spots ahead of the next league team, Western Carolina, in the latest Golfweek standings.

“We’re definitely the favorites,” UTC sophomore Derek Rende said. “Last year, nobody else thought we were good, but we did. I don’t think other people knew what we were capable of, but we did.”

Everyone knows now. The stats are startling.

UTC has won a school-record four tournaments this year, junior Jonathan Hodge has earned three individual titles, and the Mocs’ starting lineup owns five of the top eight spots in the SoCon scoring averages.

Heading into the week, UTC had more head-to-head victories (130) than any other school in the country.

“It’s more nerve-racking as a coach with five guys that deserve to be all-conference and five guys who could all win the tournament,” Guhne said. “There is more pressure when you go in as a favorite than when you go in trying to chase somebody down.”

Rende, Hodge and the rest of the team are trying to ignore the sense that they are expected to win. Unlike last year, they have a season of sensational success under their belt.

“The only pressure we have is what we put on ourselves,” said Hodge, ranked No. 27 in the NCAA. “We’ve had success and we know we can do it again.”

Mays knows it too.

“We can go up there and give a free whirl,” Mays said. “It will be fun to be on the other side of that coin this year.”