University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball coach Dan Earl felt like his program was getting a good player when the Mocs found Tyler Millin in the NCAA transfer portal.
The former Middle Tennessee State University forward may have been even better than good, and all it took was a little reshaping of the 6-foot-7 senior's mindset.
That's been evident since Millin arrived in Chattanooga, a move that has seemingly given the graduate transfer a new lease on life -- or at least on the basketball court.
"It's confidence," Millin said recently. "It's the coaching staff believing in me, trusting me and letting me play with freedom and not just thinking out there. I just feel like myself now. ... I haven't felt like this in a long time. I just feel like how I usually play. At Middle, I was kind of struggling, I had a down year with a lot of mental mistakes, in my head, emotional, thinking if I'm going to come out of the game or not.
"Here I just feel freedom and am loving a new start."
To his point, Millin appeared in 64 of the Blue Raiders' 70 games the past two seasons, starting 35. But he averaged just four shots per game in those two seasons, a far cry from the eight he put up for UTC on Monday night, when the Mocs opened the season with an 89-44 win against Covenant College at McKenzie Arena.
In addition, his 3-point percentage plummeted from 36% in 2021-22 to 28% last season for the Conference USA program in Murfreesboro.
"I just needed a new environment," said Millin, who joined the Mocs with one season of eligibility remaining. "I've been at Middle for years, you know, just seeing the same stuff every day just kind of gets old, and I kind of wanted to see something new.
"Here at UTC, I just like the environment, the coaching staff, my teammates, the support from the fans, it's really just like family here. It's real supportive and I like it, it keeps me level-headed."
Earl, in his second season leading the Mocs after guiding them to the Southern Conferenc tournament final in his first, expected the team was going to get a solid role player when Millin committed. MTSU is known as a tough, hard-nosed defensive program, and that has been evident in how well Millin communicates on that end of the court.
Even before Millin entered the portal, though, Earl and his staff had the chance to observe him in person last season. The Mocs beat MTSU 82-73 on Dec. 15 in Murfreesboro, with Millin scoring five points and grabbing a pair of rebounds in limited action (15 minutes).
The pleasant surprise since he has arrived in Chattanooga has come from his offensive production. Millin averaged 15 points, nine rebounds and 2.5 assists per game in the Mocs' two preseason scrimmages, and he followed that up in the season opener with 13 points and eight rebounds in Monday's victory against, the Scots, the Division II program from Lookout Mountain.
"He's better than we expected. His shot's better than we thought," Earl said. "It's not that we thought he couldn't shoot it, but he didn't do a ton of it, and he's better than we expected. We're just trying to get him used to the offense and how he can find his mark there as well, but he's going to positively impact things from defense and rebounding and then offensively going to get the ball off the boards.
"He's been a pleasure to be around."
The Mocs visit Atlantic Coast Conference program Louisville at 7 p.m. Friday at the KFC Yum! Center. The Cardinals opened their season Monday with a 94-93 home win against the University of Maryland, Baltimore County -- the program known for becoming the first No. 16 seed in NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament history to defeat a No. 1 seed, taking down Virginia 74-54 in 2018.
UTC's next home game is Tuesday, with Bellarmine visiting for a 7 p.m. tipoff at McKenzie.
Women with weekend tests
The UTC women are also on the road Friday, facing Austin Peay at 7 p.m. Eastern in what some within the program consider a revenge game of sorts for the Mocs.
The ASUN's Lady Governors hit a 3-pointer in the closing seconds of last season's meeting in Chattanooga to pick up a 59-57 win, but they're 0-1 this season after falling 75-59 at home to Division II program Trevecca in the first game ever in the Clarksville school's brand-new arena.
However, just like Earl's Mocs on their road trip, the UTC women are trying to treat this as just another game during a busy first week as they return home to face Marshall at 2 p.m Sunday at McKenzie.
"I love the group we have," second-year UTC coach Shawn Poppie said after Monday's 88-32 home win over King University, a D-II program from Bristol. "I'm excited to watch them handle adversity, that's part of it.
"We're taking it one day at a time."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.