A win over Western Carolina on Thursday cauterized the Mocs' wounds caused by a four-game losing streak including three during a six-day road trip.
For the first time in two weeks, the Mocs felt good about themselves.
Who are these Mocs? The team that blew a 16-point lead at UNC Greensboro and a 14-point lead at Elon, or the squad that humbled the first-place team in North Division?
The answer probably lies somewhere in between. But Friday's meeting and practice was filled with optimism that had been missing since they won six straight. They were feeling good instead of bad.
"The way we played last night was Dr. Jekyll in that we came out and did what we have to do, defended and rebounded," sophomore forward Dante Harvey said. "That's going to show up the rest of the season.
"(Thursday) was the end of a skid and the start of the rest of our season. We're going to be all-out for these next nine games."
The first of those comes tonight at 7:30 p.m. against Appalachian State (12-8, 6-3 SoCon) in McKenzie Arena as the second game of a double-header with the Lady Mocs facing Elon at 5 p.m.
"If we want to get back in the race we have to take care of business at home," UTC coach John Shulman said. "What better way to do that than by beating the top two teams in the north and that's Western Carolina and App State."
The Mocs (12-10, 4-5) beat Western Carolina 80-67 by playing one of their better halves of the season over the final 20 minutes when they outscored the Catamounts 51-31.
For the whole game, they played far from perfect and a good distance from great.
"We didn't play perfectly at all, even in the second half," point guard Keegan Bell said. "We were scrambling around and we got stops."
Yet they had a vast improvement in effort and enthusiasm as intangibles and improved defense and rebounding as evidenced by holding WCU to 36.4 percent shooting and grabbing 15 offensive rebounds.
"It's called youth, you get that at times, and sometimes it ain't no fun to coach," Shulman said. "It's called being inconsistent. That's why a rookie quarterback in the NFL goes up and down."
Junior college transfer Ridge McKeither played his best game since before Christmas, Bell repeatedly broke down WCU's defense with the dribble, and bench players -- including walk-ons Dontay Hampton and Sam Watson -- made key contributions, such as when Jeff Smith grabbed an offensive rebound and flipped the ball to McKeither while falling out of bounds.
"We're not two different teams, just two different hearts," said McKeither, whose 15 points were second on the team to Ty Patterson's 19 against the Cats. "In the games we lost, we didn't have a lot of heart, a lot of confidence in ourselves. But we had heart (Thursday night).
"We have to keep doing what we're doing."