While most of the of the college basketball coaching community was either asleep or glued to opponent game films at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, Chattanooga State coach Jay Price was doing laundry. His Tigers' laundry. Both men and women.
"This isn't like Tennessee, where they had somebody to do everything for you," said Price, who played for the Vols in the early 1990s. "If I don't do it, it won't get done."
That overall attitude propelled both squads to the National Junior College Athletic Association tournaments in Kansas for the first time ever.
Only trouble was, the men were in Hutchinson, the women in Salinas, more than an hour away.
So Price - who coaches both squads - has been busy traveling back and forth between the two communities to direct both practices and games. Alas, he couldn't keep either team from losing on Wednesday.
The men having already dropped their opener on Tuesday to No. 3 Midland, Price chose to coach the girls on Wednesday against State Fair Community College of Missouri while assistant Travis Glover directed the men in their consolation bracket game against Waycross.
"We lost 66-50," said Price of his girls, who now are 22-7 on the season. "Our guys lost by one point [60-59]."
The men's season now concludes with a record of 24-7, and they will ride to Salinas today to watch the women in their second game against Georgia Perimeter.
"All these teams are really good," said Price, whose own teams road buses for nearly 18 hours last weekend to make sure they were one of 16 teams out of 221 in each division to make the national field.
"There was three inches of snow on the ground the day we got here," said Price. "Tonight I'm outside talking to you in my shirtsleeves."
Despite the losses, Price insists this will have a positive impact on his program.
"Even though it hasn't worked out the way we wanted on the scoreboard, this is going to help us in the future. It's going to help in recruiting. It's going to help the school understand what a bigger budget could do for us."
Until then, Price knows the detergent stops with him.
"Oh, yes, there's more laundry to do tonight," he said. "There's always more laundry."