The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team is not, presently, hard at work preparing for the NCAA tournament. In fact, the Lady Mocs haven’t been on the court together since winning the Southern Conference tournament Monday in North Charleston, S.C.
Coach Wes Moore gave his players four days off following their 71-59 win over Western Carolina in the championship game, the longest break the players and coaches have had since late December.
“We can’t prepare for anyone right now,” Moore said. “It is our spring break this week, so we will give our kids several days off, similar to break we took for Christmas, and I hope it’s the same results. I thought we came back after Christmas with more energy.
“I know last year when we came back to start practice for the NCAA tournament, I said something like, ‘Man, you’re running better, you’re jumping better,’ and (star forward Alex Anderson) said, ‘Well, we finally got our legs back.’”
The way the Lady Mocs’ schedule worked out, they should be well rested heading into the NCAA tournament. Since beating UNC Greensboro on Feb. 11, they have played just seven games, and the only three games they have played this month were in the SoCon tournament.
The players and coaches naturally are eager to learn their seeding, where they will be playing and against whom in the first round. But the brackets won’t be revealed until Monday on ESPN’s selection show at 7 p.m., so there’s little anyone can do but wait and wonder.
Junior Erin Ogan said that in the past UTC was in school so the players were able to focus on their classes, but that’s not the case this time around.
“It’s so awful sitting there waiting. You want to know, like right now,” Ogan said. “We want to know where we’re going and who we’re playing, so we can start preparing. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
As of Thursday, both ESPN.com “bracketologist” Charlie Creme and Jerry P. Palm, who runs CollegeRPI.com, have UTC as a No. 12 seed in their projected women’s tournament brackets. Palm has the Lady Mocs playing No. 5 seed Oklahoma State in Des Moines in the first round; Creme has them facing Notre Dame in Norfolk, Va.
The Lady Mocs, who own Division I’s longest winning streak at 24 games, are scheduled to resume practice Saturday.
John Frierson is in his fifth year at the Times Free Press and fifth year covering University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletics. The bulk of his time is spent covering Mocs football, but he also writes about women’s basketball and the big-picture issues and news involving the athletic department. A native of Athens, Ga., John grew up a few hundred yards from the University of Georgia campus. Instead of becoming a Bulldog he attended Ole ...
