Rodney Chatman, solid defense lead UTC men past Charlotte

Mocs defeat 49ers 64-50 at McKenzie Arena

UTC's Rodney Chatman (1) drives past Charlotte's Jon Davis (3) for a layup. The Charlotte 49ers visited the University of Chattanooga at Tennessee Mocs in basketball action at McKenzie Arena on December 10, 2017.
UTC's Rodney Chatman (1) drives past Charlotte's Jon Davis (3) for a layup. The Charlotte 49ers visited the University of Chattanooga at Tennessee Mocs in basketball action at McKenzie Arena on December 10, 2017.

Maybe Rodney Chatman needs to talk to himself more often.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga sophomore point guard, who was coming off a six-turnover performance last Tuesday at Marshall, poured in 23 points - including 15 in the second half - and the Mocs overcame a long span without a field goal to defeat Charlotte 64-50 Sunday afternoon at McKenzie Arena.

The Mocs (5-5) are on the road for their next two games, at Tennessee Tech next Sunday and at Jacksonville State on Dec. 21, before hosting Georgia State on Dec. 23.

Chatman's second-half performance came on 5-for-10 shooting from the field. He was aided by Makinde London, who finished with 11 points, nine rebounds, four assists and three steals. Nat Dixon scored eight points to go with six rebounds, while Joshua Phillips had seven points and David Jean-Baptiste and James Lewis contributed six apiece. Lewis added eight rebounds.

"I'm the leader of the team," Chatman said. "It depends on me how many games we win or lose, so I had to step up. I had a talk with myself at halftime in the locker room and told myself that I had to pick it up, and I did that."

The 49ers (3-6) were led by Hudson Price's 15 points on 5-for-6 shooting. Ryan Murphy added 12, but Jon Davis, their leading scorer this season, was held to five points on 2-for-9 shooting. Charlotte shot 44 percent from the field and had 20 turnovers.

"Fortunately we were able to find a groove to be back in the game by halftime, and I felt good about that, but we struggled to score the ball in the second half," Charlotte coach Mark Price said. "Chattanooga is a good defensive team, and we knew that coming in, but we've got to be able to score more than that to win on the road.

"Our defense is what got us back in the game in the second half, but at the same time we've got to take advantage of those stops and score on the other end of the floor. We just struggled offensively today."

The Mocs won despite their span of 9 minutes and 29 seconds of game clock without a field goal, a drought that spanned the first and second halves. UTC's lead was 25-11 after a Makale Foreman 3-pointer in the corner with 6:22 remaining in the first half, but by the time James Lewis hit a hook shot in the lane with 16:53 left in the game, the 49ers had tied the score at 33.

The Mocs had six of their 14 turnovers in that span.

"In that stretch, we got away from what we're supposed to do, Chattanooga basketball," junior Nat Dixon said. "We've got to eliminate that down the stretch."

Lewis's shot seemed to take the lid off the rim for UTC, and making a few shots combined with a solid defensive performance helped the Mocs start to pull away. They led by 15 points down the stretch while limiting the 49ers to 40 percent shooting in the second half.

"We stuck with what our game plan was, did what we do and just tried to do it a little bit better," UTC coach Lamont Paris said. "We didn't change anything; we just wanted to do our things better, but not a lot better. We had some stretches in the first half when we looked pretty good, especially on the defensive end. To hold that team to 50, that's hard to do. I thought we stuck with our defensive philosophies, I thought we did a better job of playing our rules defensively, and it yielded some results.

"We just stuck to the script. We didn't turn it over, and we've been fairly efficient on the offensive end when we don't turn it over, so it was nice to get extra possessions and get looks at the basket."

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.

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