Thursday afternoon, things seemed to be back to normal for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball team in a mid-December practice session.
The players were laughing and discussing holiday plans as they finished lifting weights and prepared for a session in the Chattem Basketball Practice Facility on campus. Moses Johnson and Ansley Chilton discussed what food would be served at the team's Christmas party. Junior guard Alicia Payne was asking which teammate had drawn her name for the gift exchange, and senior Ka'Vonne Towns was singing Christmas songs as the team waited for the UTC men to finish practice.
But things are far from normal after Wednesday night's 54-46 upset win over No. 7 Stanford. The Mocs are the talk of women's college basketball after beating two Top 10 teams in three weeks, and they were prominently featured on ESPN as well as the network's women's sports website, ESPNw.com.
Photo Gallery
Street Performance
Melissa, Assistant Editor, set up shop in the river market as a street performer-- playing her guitar, and singing songs.
Despite the acclaim, the team was ready to get back to work to host the Chattanooga Christmas Classic this weekend, with games against Morgan State and North Carolina A&T.
"After the win (over Stanford), Coach (Jim Foster) said 'good job' and we were excited," Payne said. "but he said we still can get a lot better and we still have a lot of work to do.
"So we just came in today and have been lifting weights, and we're heading back to practice to get ready for our Saturday game against Morgan State."
In the history of UTC women's basketball, the Mocs are 5-61 against ranked teams, but three of those wins have come in the past two years and two have come in the past month with the win over Stanford and a 67-63 win over then-No. 4 Tennessee on Nov. 26.
Foster said after the Stanford win that learning to beat elite teams is important if the program wants to progress further in postseason play.
"I thought last year's team was really good, and I thought by the end of the year we had learned to really play hard," he said of the 2013-14 squad that won the Southern Conference championship but lost to Syracuse in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. "But we hadn't had the frame of reference experiences to play in the NCAA tournament.
"We now have those frame-of-reference experiences, and if this team learns to play as hard as last year's team did at the end ... then our opportunities are better to be successful in the postseason."
But there's still work to be done by then.
"It's the middle of December," Foster said as practice began Thursday. "We might as well retire and let them do whatever they want if we can't keep getting them better by March. Every phase of the game we have to get better at."
Still, it's hard to find fault with the Mocs' defensive effort against Stanford. The Cardinal had been shooting 46.4 percent from the field coming into the game at McKenzie Arena, but UTC limited them to 27.2 percent with no Stanford players scoring in double figures.
"They were right up into our shooters defensively," longtime coach Tara VanDerveer said. "They were trying to limit our 3-point shooters, and we didn't take or didn't make some pull-up opportunities."
Sophomore guard Chelsey Shumpert said the Mocs were intent throughout the game on not giving Stanford's shooters easy looks.
"We were really aggressive coming off picks and switching off picks," she said. "We got up in their stuff a little bit. I wouldn't say it knocked them completely off, but we just made sure we got up in their grill."
Staying out of foul trouble allowed the Mocs to remain aggressive down the stretch. That was particularly important for post player Jasmine Joyner, who had no fouls and was able to be more aggressive on defense, especially in the crucial final minutes as Stanford tried to rally late.
"I was really thinking about foul trouble (in the first half)," Joyner said. "I didn't know how the ref would be calling them, so I was a little gentle and less aggressive than I usually am so I could stay in the game longer.
"But then I saw that they were going to let us play, and I had no fouls going into halftime. So I just said I was going to play more aggressive and do whatever I could do to get a rebound."
On offense, the Mocs did enough to get the win, with Shumpert's five 3-pointers and the team going 11-for-13 from the free-throw line. But UTC was held without a field goal for the final 11:26 of the game, and more consistant scoring is something the team likely will emphasize in Saturday's 4 p.m. game against Morgan State.
"I feel like we just trying to alternate our play because they were so tall and blocking it when we would try to drive it in," Joyner said. "But they were giving us shots when we stuck to our jump shots behind the 3-point line instead of trying to drive.
"We did use most of the shot clock. We had to make them play defense for a good 28 seconds of the shot clock. I think defense wins the game, and that's what got us there."
Foster was asked after the game if he thought the 7-3 Mocs deserved to be ranked after wins over teams ranked No. 4 and No. 7 and losses to No. 3 Notre Dame, South Florida and Arkansas State.
While not hopeful of making the Top 25 next week, the Hall of Fame coach did indicate that he thinks the Mocs deserve the recognition they are getting, and perhaps more.
"The people that vote are coaches and writers," Foster said. "I'll drink a little wine with both of them, but I won't trust them to vote. I think it's regional somewhat.
"Do I think we should be (ranked)? Well, yeah. The wins are better than the losses."
Contact Jim Tanner at jtanner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6478. Follow him at twitter.com/JFTanner.