From start to finish, things went from bad to worse for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team.

Anything that could have gone wrong pretty much did as the Mocs lost to every NCAA opponent they faced on the way to the first 11-loss season in school history.

The 1-11 record, which included 10 consecutive losses to end the season, cost coach Rodney Allison his job. Athletic director Rick Hart announced Oct. 21, with four games left on the schedule, that Allison’s sixth season would be his last.

The bottom line, Allison said, is that the Mocs just weren’t a very good team on game day, and that ultimately is the responsibility of the coaches.

“When that happens, to me it all goes back to coaching,” Allison said after Saturday’s season finale, a 30-7 loss to Samford. “You don’t blame 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. You coach them to where they respond in situations, and for some reason we have not done a very good job of doing that this year.

“It is the player’s fault sometimes, but that’s what you coach for. You coach to take the test on Saturday, and we have flunked 11 tests on Saturday this year.”

The Mocs faced adversity from the start, as starting center Brian Heflin and running back Bryan Fitzgerald, the team’s leading rusher in 2007, reported for preseason practice with significant injuries. Heflin missed the first eight games with a protruding disk in his back, and Fitzgerald missed the season with a knee injury that required surgery.

“It was a new experience for me to sit around and watch all season, and to see the way we played, it was hard,” said Fitzgerald, who redshirted and has one year of eligibility remaining. “I’m working hard, rehabbing and doing everything I can to come back strong next year.”

The schedule didn’t help the Mocs develop confidence. They opened at Oklahoma, played at Florida State two weeks later and then hosted Jacksonville State. After that was the eight-game Southern Conference slate, and by the time the season came to an end last Saturday, UTC had lost its last 10 games by an average of 28.8 points.

The Mocs’ lone win was a 47-6 smashing of Cumberland University, an NAIA school, in week two.

“After the Florida State game, we said, ‘OK, we’ll be on our level now,’ and we thought we’d show what we could do against Jacksonville State, but that was horrible,” wide receiver Jordan Hazard said of the Mocs’ 31-3 home loss to the Gamecocks. “We kept waiting for things to get better, but they never did.”

Injuries were a problem through the first eight games, but injuries alone didn’t cause UTC to finish in the bottom of the SoCon standings, as well as at the bottom of nearly every statistical category.

The Mocs averaged 12.8 points per game — they were held to a touchdown or less nine times — the lowest total since 1984. And they gave up 37.9 points per game — allowing 42 points or more six times — the most total points UTC has allowed since 1994.

The offense never clicked, the defense gave up too many big plays and special teams made repeated mistakes. From start to finish, it was a season far worse than anyone would have imagined, said senior Brent Hayes.

“This whole season, it was a tough one — a tough one to go out on,” Hayes said. “We worked hard, we did our best, but it just never worked out for us.”