Perfect day
Olafsdottir’s shot flawless as Mocs beat Buccaneers
For everything that Sigrun Olafsdottir does for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team, scoring isn’t very high on the list.
Entering Saturday’s game against East Tennessee State University, the 5-foot-9 guard had made just 29% of her 3-point shots this season. But that’s fine, because it’s not her role on the team; instead, coach Shawn Poppie and his staff trust the fourth-year junior from Iceland as a standout defender who can guard the opponent’s best perimeter player.
So she’s going to get those open looks. And against the Buccaneers, Olafsdottir made them, knocking down all six of her shots — including four 3-point attempts — to match her career high with 16 points, and Jada Guinn knocked down a pair of free throws with 1.3 seconds to play as UTC held on for a 52-50 win at McKenzie Arena.
Guinn led the Mocs (15-3, 3-0 Southern Conference) with 17 points as they took sole possession of first place in the league standings.
“Sigrun is always in the gym every single day working on her shot, and we’re always confident in her, telling her to continue to shoot. I was happy she was able to knock those down today,” said Guinn, a graduate transfer from Tennessee Tech who is UTC’s leading scorer
this season and entered Saturday having made half of her shots.
Guinn, who was 6-for-16 from the field against the Bucs (13-5, 2-1), made all five of her free throws, with sophomore forward Raven Thompson doing the same as the Mocs went 10-for-10 at the line.
Since back-to-back losses just before Christmas, the Mocs have won four straight games, all at home, but
they’re on the road for their next two. They’ll face UNC Greensboro (13-6, 2-2) at 7 p.m. Thursday and Western Carolina (5-14, 0-4) at 2 p.m. next Saturday before hosting Wofford on Feb. 1.
The shooting and hustle of Olafsdottir — she also tracked down a big offensive rebound in the fourth quarter that led to a Caia Elisaldez layup with the Mocs clinging to a two-point lead — and the last-second heroics of Guinn disguised what had been a rough secondhalf performance by the home team.
UTC went nearly nine minutes of game time without scoring, allowing the Bucs to go on a 14-0 run. ETSU then tied the game on a Nevaeh Brown jumper with 1:16 remaining, but after a Guinn miss inside, Olafsdottir’s defense led to a miss by Brown with seven seconds remaining, setting up the final play.
“We just had to keep getting stops,” Olafsdottir said. “We knew the ball was going to fall when it needs to, so we just kept playing defense, rebounding and playing our game.”
Brown (13 points) and Kendall Folley (10) were the leading scorers for ETSU, which trailed 16-14 after the first quarter, 28-23 at halftime and 45-36 after the third.
Defensively, the Bucs did a good job on Thompson, last year’s SoCon tournament MVP, holding her to 1-for-8 shooting from the field in the game for seven points and five rebounds. Addie Porter finished with five points, Elisaldez four and Karsen Murphy three for all of the Mocs’ scoring. Porter also had four steals.
“I’m proud of the kids,” Poppie said. “We found a way. It was not the prettiest of games for us, but we had two more points than they did. I thought we competed hard, I thought we played hard, I thought we had good intent. We’ve just got to clean some things up, but a lot of credit to ETSU; they did some things defensively that kind of confused us.
“We’ll be better moving forward.”