The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball team claimed the No. 25 spot in The Associated Press rankings by using lock-down defense to cause opposing teams to miss shots and make mistakes.
Monday night the Mocs relied on that same formula to win their first game as a ranked team in more than 30 years, grinding out an ugly 49-32 Southern Conference win over Samford in front of 1,669 fans at McKenzie Arena.
UTC (18-3, 6-0) shot 30 percent from the field in the second half and scored just 16 points, but strong defensive pressure held the Bulldogs to 12 points in the final 20 minutes on 4-of-16 field-goal shooting, as a 33-20 halftime lead held up.
"Coach (Jim Foster) told us yesterday in practice that all of the games are not going to be pretty," junior guard Alicia "Red" Payne said after the game. "We're not always going to knock down shots or shoot a high percentage from 3 or even from the field.
"But the one thing we can control is our defense. In every single game we can play the best defense we can, so we just had to rely on that tonight."
UTC started quickly, opening on a 20-4 run with senior Ka'Vonne Towns knocking down two big 3-pointers.
"I think it really set our momentum and got us going," said Towns, who finished with 13 points and three of UTC's 11 steals. "We just tried to get going after that and keep playing hard."
The points were hard to come by after the early surge, but UTC kept Samford (11-9, 4-1) from getting anything going consistently on offense by forcing 18 turnovers and turning them into 18 points -- 13 in the first half.
"I thought that was the difference in the game," Samford coach Mike Morrison said. "I thought we defended OK. Their pressure bothered us early and knocked us out of rhythm. We really couldn't get into a flow and get where we wanted to get to.
"They're a very sound defensive team. They do a great job ... of getting getting good, aggressive pressure without fouling."
Foster praised his team's effort in winning a game when the shots aren't falling.
"When you can win a game by 17 points and your centers (Jasmine Joyner and Destiny Bramblett) went 2-for-16, that's not a bad thing," he said. "It's easy to win when they go 10-for-16.
"It's harder to win the other games, and the games you grind out are much more reflectional of what kind of team you have than the games you win by a large number of points."
Freshman Keiana Gilbert led the Mocs with 14 points, seven rebounds, four steals and two blocks, and she seems to be figuring out how to get to the basket against SoCon teams more familiar with how UTC plays.
"In practice we go over what the other team is going to do," she said. "I just take my shots off of how they're going to defend me."
Samford was led by Taylor Reece with 10 points. The Bulldogs were outrebounded 35-32 , outscored 24-18 in the paint and just 3-for-15 from 3-point range.
"(Samford is) a team that you can't let them shoot the 3-pointer and you can't let them back-cut you," Foster said. "We defended those two things fairly well and then made them take the kind of shots they're not comfortable with."
"The shots weren't going in tonight ... but if you guard you can still win games. That's what this team understands, and they do a pretty good job of it."
Contact Jim Tanner at jtanner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6478. Follow him at twitter.com/JFTanner.