UTC women want better road results
Alicia Payne enjoys a challenge.
She’ll face a pair of them over the next three days.
The 5-foot-9 senior guard — the reigning Southern Conference defensive player of the year — and her University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball teammates will travel to UNC Greensboro and Western Carolina for their final road games of the regular season.
The last road swing didn’t go so well, as the Mocs (16-7, 7-2 Southern Conference) dropped games at Mercer and Samford. They followed that with a trip to East Tennessee State University, where they won 63-56.
“We weren’t mentally tough,” center Jasmine Joyner said of the Mercer and Samford games. “It’s time for us to show we’re mature enough to go on the road and get wins and play together like we do at home. It’s obvious we’re more comfortable here, and now we need to go on the road and play just as hard as we do here.”
The Mocs host Mercer, Samford and ETSU in the final games of the regular season.
But first they head to UNCG (8-16, 0-9) for a 7 p.m. tipoff today and face Western Carolina at 2 p.m. Saturday in Cullowhee, N.C. The Spartans and Catamounts are led, respectively, by guards Lucy Mason and Ace Easter, who lead their teams in scoring.
Mason ranks third in the league in scoring in conference games, averaging 19.4 points, while Easter is fifth at 15.9 and leads the SoCon in 3-point percentage at 43.5 percent.
“They’re challenging players,” Payne said. “They’re really good — they score a lot of points and carry their teams on their back — so I take it as a challenge that if I stop them, there’s a greater chance we’ll be successful knowing they can’t get easy looks at the basket and they’re not able to be as effective for their team.
“I just have to do what I can do to make sure I do all I can to make that happen.”
UTC coach Jim Foster said the responsibility for stopping Mason and Easter won’t lie solely on Payne. Easter is efficient — ranking eighth in the league in field-goal percentage — while Mason is more of a volume shooter, having taken 31 percent of her team’s shots this season.
As she goes, so do the Spartans.
“You have to take care of business,” Foster said. “You can’t let one person get off, and there are a lot of alternatives how to deal with that. You just have to make sure all of them are available to you and you’re not dependent on any one thing.
“How many shots can you make uncomfortable? There are just a lot of ways to defend, and you have to make sure you search and find the one that works for you.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.