Mocs are favorites in SoCon this time

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga will open play in the Southern Conference women’s basketball tournament when it faces Western Carolina at 11 a.m. Thursday at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, North Carolina.

Here are five things to know about the Mocs heading into the postseason.

1. Reigning champs

When the top-seeded Mocs (25-4) take the court against eighth-seeded Western Carolina (6-23), they’ll begin their bid to repeat as SoCon tournament champions a year after their unlikely title run in Shawn Poppie’s first season as UTC’s coach. Wofford, which beat the Mocs twice during the regular season last year — doing so by a combined 32 points — was probably a better team, but UTC got hot at the right time and put together a defensive masterpiece to win 63-53 in the title game and send the program back to the NCAA tourney for the first time since 2017. UTC forward Raven Thompson, just a freshman at the time, was named MVP of the SoCon tournament.

2. Guaranteed bid

The Mocs built off last year’s success by running roughshod through the 2023-24 regular season, winning 25 games and finishing 13-1 in SoCon play — five games clear of the rest of the league — to earn the program’s 23rd regular-season championship and clinch at the very least the league’s automatic bid to the Women’s National Invitation Tournament. Of course, the Mocs have higher aspirations than that, and 17 of the prior times the Mocs won the SoCon regular-season title, they also won the league’s postseason event and advanced to the

NCAA bracket.

3. Top coach

This season’s roster is far from flawless, but what it has been is tough. Poppie and his staff found ways to mix the pieces properly and use the right combinations of lineups to post some key victories, including over Mississippi State, Kent State, Eastern Kentucky and Lipscomb in nonconference competition. Combined with the SoCon success, that propelled Poppie to become the program’s first SoCon coach of the year since Jim Foster in 2014-15 (also in his second season). Poppie was voted such by both his fellow SoCon coaches and media covering the league.

4. 1-2 punch leads way

There’s no question who led the way offensively for the Mocs this season. Jada Guinn, an offseason transfer who played four seasons at Tennessee Tech, came to UTC fresh off an Ohio Valley Conference tournament MVP selection after propelling the Golden Eagles to the NCAA tourney. This season, she was among the SoCon leaders in scoring (18.9 points per game, second); rebounds (7.0 per game, fifth); assists (2.6 per game, seventh) and field-goal percentage (52%, first). Thompson followed up a solid freshman season by ranking among the top 10 in scoring (14.6 points per game) and rebounds (6.9 per game). Each was named to the AllSoCon first team by both the coaches and media.

5. Other hardware

Poppie has been adamant in his praise of Sigrun Olafsdottir’s defensive capabilities, and Tuesday the league recognized the UTC junior wing by making her an all-defensive team selection and runner-up for the league’s defensive player of the year honor. In addition, Hannah Kohn exploded on the scene for the Mocs with her long-range shooting and wound up having a solid first college season, averaging 7.3 points and ranking third in the country in 3-point success at 45.9%, which led to her receiving SoCon allfreshman recognition.