Mocs’ Shumpert in home state for NCAA matchup
Chelsey Shumpert always enjoys playing games in her home state of Kentucky but has done that only twice during her University of Tennessee at Chattanooga basketball career.
She and her teammates hope they have a much better result the third time.
The 5-foot-4 junior guard played 22 minutes in the 63-47 loss to Louisville on Nov. 21, finishing with two points and two assists before an injury that caused her to miss games against Green Bay and Maine. She had just started to improve at the position, but the Mocs’ offense stalled in the two games she missed.
It already was a work in progress with Shumpert in her first season as a point guard.
As the season has gone on, she’s continued to improve, and she and the other UTC guards will have to be at their best
Saturday when they face Louisville again in the first round of the NCAA tournament at 1:45 p.m.
“We’re not going to worry about what happened the last game we played them,” Shumpert
said Monday. “We’re going to come out and compete as hard as we can, and the results will show. I feel really confident in myself and the whole team. We’re better, and we’re way more confident in ourselves as individuals, and that’s carried over to our team play.
“It’ll be a good matchup.”
Coach Jim Foster agrees and said that sending out the seniors the right way — not a homecoming — should be the top priority. Shumpert was a part of the 2013 signing class with Ansley Chilton, Aryanna Gilbert, Moses Johnson and Jasmine Joyner. Injuries have caused redshirt seasons for Chilton, Gilbert and Shumpert, who all will be back next season.
“Time you spend on yourself is wasted time, so she can’t go up there with any kind of approach relative to where this game is,” Foster said. “It’s about the teammates she’s been around. It’s the group that came in with her that’s leaving as she gets to stay another year.
“That’s what she should be thinking.” Shumpert indeed shrugged off the in-state angle, saying she’s “played there before.” She grew up in Paducah, which is about three hours away from both Louisville and Lexington, the site of the Mocs’ 2014 NCAA firstround matchup against Syracuse. She’s grown since then as a player and has grown this season as the lead guard, averaging 10.9 points and three assists per game. In the 23 games since her return from injury, she’s had 10 games of at least four assists.
“I just have to get everyone involved,” she said. “I’d never played point guard before — even in high school — but I just have to make it a team effort, make sure everyone shows up and competes.”
And if all the Mocs do that, she can get one more chance to play in her home state, on Monday.