Mocs' awful shooting includes missed 1-footers

Sometimes a coach won't show his team a video of its previous games.

Some coaches have gone so far as to find a shovel, dig a hole and put a film roll, a VHS casette or a DVD disc in the ground and bury it.

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball coach John Shulman has those three options - plus the one of showing ugly clips to his team - after Austin Peay beat the Mocs 89-57 Monday night in Clarksville, Tenn.

He couldn't get through watching it on the bus and didn't bother showing any of it to the Mocs before a short practice Tuesday.

"I don't know how much it helps showing them Sam [Watson] air-ball a 1-footer or Jeremy [Saffore] miss a 1-footer or Troy Cage air-ball a 2-footer," Shulman said. "We were in a funk from the tip. I don't think this is our basketball team."

UTC played its worst game since an 80-59 loss at Florida International on Nov. 27, 12 days after Austin Peay made a shot with 0.2 second left to edge the Mocs 70-67 in McKenzie Arena.

Nothing seemed right from the outset Monday night for UTC. Shulman chose to start DeAntre Jefferson at center instead of Saffore one day after stating that he needed more production from Saffore, Watson or Jahmal Burroughs.

Just before tipoff, officials forced starting off-guard Omar Wattad to remove his undershirt - because of a logo - which forced Cage into action for a possession at each end.

"We started off the game where Omar couldn't start. That delayed us a bit and we were messed up from there," Cage said after the contest. "It wasn't just that alone. We didn't have any fight tonight.

"It looks like our hard work in practice was for nothing, because we gave this sort of effort tonight."

It's an effort that can be expected once or twice, maybe three times a year in a 30-plus-game season.

As Shulman said afterward, teams are going to lose a couple of games each year because they're so off, but they usually win a couple because they're more "on" than usual.

UTC now is 0-2 on that side of that emotional ledger with 15 Southern Conference games to go in the regular season.

Shulman and his team have beat only two NCAA Division I teams by six points or more. The Mocs beat Western Carolina by six and Appalachian State by 12 as part of their 3-0 SoCon start.

"It had to be one of those nights," point guard Keegan Bell said after UTC's 23.7 percent shooting performance, its worst accuracy since the fall of 1997. "We were missing shots. Layups weren't going in.

"In no way did we play our best."

Shulman chalked up part of the loss, especially the lack of quickness - mental and physical - to the Mocs being tired. Josh Odem is gone because of academic ineligibility, and two practice players for this year have been missing, Martynas Barieka with a foot injury and Drazen Slovaric on an extended holiday vacation.

"Our numbers are down and we're going to have to re-evaluate our practices," Shulman said. "My biggest concern is that we looked fatigued. We couldn't move. We couldn't guard. We couldn't keep anybody in front of us. A shot would go up and we couldn't keep anybody on our back to box out. We were a step slow."

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