Mocs credit nonconference challenges for toughness
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team earned Sunday’s Southern Conference championship victory over Mercer in Asheville, N.C., by rallying from 12 points down in the final 10:03.
The foundation of that win was laid in November and December.
That’s when the Mocs were going through the rigors of a strenuous nonconference schedule that included eight games against teams projected in the NCAA tournament field or on the bubble. They went 5-8 against that nonconference slate, but it slate prepared them for the SoCon.
UTC swept Mercer by an average of 19 points during the regular season but trailed the Bears 48-36 Sunday before a pair of Queen Alford free throws just before the end of the third quarter. Those were the first of Alford’s 13 points in the game and sparked a 20-4 run to give the Mocs a six-point lead, which helped them build enough of a cushion to overcome some shaky ball-handling down the stretch for a 61-59 win.
“We became tougher throughout the season,” UTC coach Jim Foster said Sunday. “We did not start this game well, and we did not play well for a long time, and Mercer played very well. But when we made a basket or two and changed defenses, it energized us. You could see it, and you could feel it.
“The baskets started coming after that.”
Foster was hard on his team throughout the season, expressing disappointment after narrow losses to Florida and Indiana — games the Mocs lost with poor fourth quarters — and defeats also against Louisville, Connecticut and Notre Dame, when scoring dry spells doomed UTC. It made the Mocs a tighter unit, one that was able to rally when everything was completely against them Sunday against a Mercer team that had outplayed them for the better part of 30 minutes.
And because of that, UTC again awaits a NCAA tournament matchup. The latest bracketology has UTC as a 15 seed, traveling back to Starkville, Miss., to face Mississippi State in a rematch of last season’s first-round game won by the Bulldogs. Brackets are fluid and nothing will be known until Monday evening, but one thing the Mocs do know is that they’ll be one of the 64 teams in the field for the fifth consecutive season.
All because they didn’t quit. “I felt we probably would have put our heads down and thought the game was over (without the tough nonconference schedule),” senior Jasmine Joyner said. “With the season we had, we learned how to fight and come together more. We always make the comeback to fight and win.
“If we did not have the tough schedule, it would not have showed how tough we are.”