John Shulman didn't sleep very long Wednesday night because he arrived home about 2 a.m. and had a 6:30 alarm to rise with his three sons.
But the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball coach had his most restful night in weeks.
Wednesday afternoon, he received scholarship papers from 6-foot-9 Emmanuel Ochenje, who at one point was the top-rated player in Illinois before essentially skipping ahead a year in high school.
Then in the evening, Shulman's Mocs squad beat the team that thumped Georgia Tech by 17 points on Monday.
UTC pulled out a 73-69 victory at Kennesaw State from the clutches of defeat with self-described "goofballs" making critical plays in crucial moments.
The Mocs trailed by four points with 3:30 to play, then closed the game with a 9-3 run. And after the game, Shulman lovingly said this about the 2010-11 Mocs: "We have some guys make goofy plays. Right now, we may be a bunch of goofballs, but we're goofballs together."
Senior center DeAntre Jefferson had 16 points and 10 rebounds on a night that he could have scored 25 if he'd made the four or five shots he missed from point-blank range.
Dontay Hampton, a UTC walk-on, made the biggest play of the game when he forced KSU point guard Spencer Dixon to pick up his dribble and travel with 50 seconds to go.
The rest of the gaggle made up for the many mistakes well enough to win.
"It was a really good day for Chattanooga basketball," Shulman said. "We got Manny signed and we played good. It's nice to have won, but after watching tape and clipping it, you can see we're getting better."
One of the most significant improvements between UTC's first two games - losses by 20 points at Tennessee and at home by three against Austin Peay on a last-second play - and Wednesday's win is that UTC out-rebounded KSU by two and allowed only eight offensive boards to the Owls after allowing 18 to the Governors.
"I felt that we boxed out more and got the ball, but we still have to get it more," Jefferson said. "For us to win more, we have to out-rebound people by eight or nine and really separate ourselves."
Despite Jefferson's impressive evening, he'll begin all other game nights on the bench. Shulman said Jefferson isn't starting again until senior night. He'll play a starter's minutes, but Jeremy Saffore will jump for the opening tip.
"Every time he started last year, he struggled," Shulman said of Jefferson. "He hasn't been very good at starting games. I'm not displeased at all. Some people play better off the bench. He'll be with the starting unit in practice and games; he just won't start."
The new opening lineup will debut Saturday night at Marshall, which was a hated rival of the Mocs in the 1980s and early '90s.
Saturday's 7:30 contest is part of UTC's first full road trip this season. The Mocs bused on the day of the game to UT and KSU.
The Mocs will leave today, play Saturday and then bus to Louisville for a Monday game against the Cardinals, who beat national runner-up Butler on Tuesday.
"I think they'll enjoy not going the day of the game, and we're not going to miss one class before we leave," Shulman said. "The nice thing is that all of our new players, except Martynas [Barieka], have been through the travel grind. They know about hotels and meetings and studying."
And after Wednesday, Shulman remembered how to sleep.