University of Tennessee at Chattanooga basketball coach John Shulman can be a comedian at times during a game.
During the Mocs' 68-60 Southern Conference loss at The Citadel on Saturday, he asked referee Lee Kluttz, "Did you read the handbook this year?"
Later he told the same official, "They were going to fight if you waited any longer to blow the whistle."
He even can joke with the opposing coach.
During a delay while officials looked at a replay to determine the time that should be on the clock, Citadel coach Ed Conroy waved at Shulman and told him he was out of the coaching box. So Shulman took a step back so his toes were on the line and asked his buddy Conroy, "Is this good enough?"
But Shulman is not laughing today.
He is hurting. He is mad. He is frustrated. He is struggling to accept the probability that the 2009-10 Mocs won't be regular-season division champions, and that bothers him even though they were picked to finish fourth in the North. Each loss may as well be a back-alley bloody nose and black eye to him.
The Mocs have lost five straight conference road games and fell 2 1/2 games behind Appalachian State for second place in the North, which is the race for a SoCon tournament first-round bye.
"Is John going to be OK?" Conroy asked as he sat with his wife, Ginny, in the best seats in McAlister Fieldhouse after Saturday's game.
OK is a relative term.
Shulman composed himself, smiled and laughed when he chatted with Conroy, friends, family and retired Citadel athletic director Les Robinson. Robinson coached at East Tennessee State when Shulman was a student-athlete there.
But the Mocs coach admitted to being mad after Saturday's close loss. They trailed by one point with 4:52 to play.
"When Appalachian won earlier today, our backs were against the wall and I put it to them," Shulman said then. "We don't respond. We responded last week, but we were at home in friendly confines. We did not respond."
The Mocs were on the verge of getting blown out Thursday night, when they were down 29 points at the College of Charleston before pulling within 10 with plenty of time to win. The Cougars won 86-74.
The Mocs definitely could have won Saturday, but a 9-2 run by the Bulldogs put UTC behind 61-53 with 2:46 to play.
Citadel junior guard Zach Urbanus buried seven 3-pointers and scored 24 points against the Mocs for the third time in his career. Ridge McKeither kept UTC in the game with a career night that included 18 rebounds -- the third most in the school's Division I history -- and 13 points.
"We knew it was going to come down to the last five or four minutes," McKeither said. "We have to make those small plays, and we did at some points, but at some points we didn't."
The loss dropped UTC to 2-8 in true road games this season, with one win coming at Jacksonville State and the other at league foe Georgia Southern.
"We've all played enough basketball games on the road," said UTC's lone senior Ty Patterson, who had 19 points in the latest loss. "We have to step up. We struggle way too much on the road. In the SoCon, we have to grab a couple road games, and we've only got one.
"We could have got back in the hunt, but we made it hard on ourselves and we're in a hole. We took a step back tonight."
His coach doesn't have anybody laughing about that.