Big Ten win again for Mocs: Northwestern falls, 61-44
It appears that if the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team were to join the Big Ten, the Mocs would have some success.
UTC jumped out to a 22-7 lead after a quarter Friday against Northwestern, leading for all but 28 seconds in what turned out to be a 61-44 win over the previously unbeaten Wildcats in the Challenge in Music City at Municipal Auditorium in Nashville.
It was the Mocs’ second victory this week over a Big Ten opponent, having defeated Indiana on Monday, and the program’s third in the last four tries, as the 2016-17 team defeated Rutgers in the season opener before falling to Indiana at home.
Continuing the Challenge, the Mocs (3-3) face Georgetown tonight at 8:30 EST and Auburn on Sunday at 5:30.
Aryanna Gilbert led UTC with 17 points and six assists and chipped in five rebounds. Keiana Gilbert and Lakelyn Bouldin added nine points each, while Arianne Whitaker scored a season-high eight and Molly Melton added six. The Mocs shot 53 percent in the first quarter and 60 percent (6-for-10) in the final 10 minutes to put the game away.
The Mocs had doubled up the Wildcats (4-1) by halftime, 36-18, but watched the Big Ten team win the third quarter 19-9 to trim the margin to 45-37. UTC responded with a 15-0 spurt to start the fourth, and the lead never dipped below 16 the rest of the way.
“It was fun,” UTC coach Jim Foster said on the postgame radio broadcast. “We played good basketball in spurts, and we played pretty sound defensively. Offensively, except for the third quarter, we moved the ball well. Sometimes a young team gets a lead and gets distracted, but it’s never easy.
“I think our advantage tonight, quite frankly, has been the schedule we played as adverse to the schedule they’ve played. We’re the first team that got up in them, pressured them and made them not play in a rhythm and have to make things happen. They had one player (Lindsey Pulliam) who did a good job for them of creating, but the others needed the offense to create and we disrupted the offense enough to keep them off balance.”
Northwestern made only 32 percent of its shots and turned the ball over 15 times while making only eight assists. Pulliam scored 16 points to lead the Wildcats, who won 20 games last season.