Matt McCall thought his University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team played well enough defensively to win Saturday afternoon against East Tennessee State University.
Offensively? A much different story.
The Mocs were held to one field goal in an eight-minute stretch of the second half, falling behind 21 points in an eventual 65-51 Southern Conference loss to the Buccaneers in front of 6,402 at McKenzie Arena.
UTC (19-8, 10-5) shot 42 percent from the field, had 19 turnovers that led to 26 ETSU points and looked sluggish offensively against the Bucs (22-6, 12-3). The Mocs scored 20 points in the first half on 36 percent shooting and had 19 in the second half until four 3s in the final 2:04 pushed them over the 50-point mark.
"They average 80 points per game at home, so I didn't think we would hold them to that," ETSU coach Steve Forbes said. "I liked where we were at; I don't put a lot of stock into shootaround, but today I could tell we were tuned in, ready to go. I thought it would be a heck of a game, go down to the wire like last time, but give our guys a lot of credit for that.
"I thought defensively we just stayed with it. I knew they would make some runs, but when they did I thought we answered every time."
UTC's Casey Jones hit a 3 for the first points of the game, and Tre' McLean hit a 3 in the Mocs' first attempt of the second half. Those were the only 3-pointers the team made until the final flurry, missing its other 14 attempts.
The 51 points were the fewest in McCall's two seasons as coach and only the sixth time in 62 games that UTC failed to score at least 60. The Mocs are 1-5 in those games, the lone exception a 59-54 win over Samford in the SoCon tournament quarterfinals last season.
UTC did shoot a respectable 50 percent from the field in the second half but had 13 turnovers that turned into 21 ETSU points. A.J. Merriweather and T.J. Cromer each had 15 points to lead the Bucs, who shot 53 percent from the field and 61 percent in the second half. Tevin Glass added 10 points and eight rebounds.
"The ball wouldn't go in the basket (for us)," McCall said. "We didn't shoot the ball well until the last minute and a half, and the game was already in the balance. At some point in a game like that, you need someone to go make a play.
"ETSU is one of the best offensive teams in the country, and if you had told me we'd hold them in the 60s and lose the ballgame, I would tell you we must have been atrocious on offense. The ball didn't seem to find the basket, and we had some bad turnovers. We kept saying, 'You can't turn it over,' and we did 19 times.
"When the ball is not going in the basket and you're turning it over, you're not going to win."
McLean scored 11 points to lead the Mocs, while Johnathan Burroughs-Cook added 10.
The Bucs took control of the first half with a 10-0 run to build a 20-12 lead, holding the Mocs scoreless for 4:38. Jones ended that dry spell with a layup, and the Mocs cut the margin to 24-20 on a Rodney Chatman layup with 2:54 to play in the half, the same score the Bucs would take into the locker room.
UTC started the second half with a 7-2 run, taking the lead on McLean's 3 with 18:15 remaining, but that was the final field goal the team would make until a layup by Burroughs-Cook with 10:04 to play cut the ETSU lead to 47-30.
The Mocs had seven turnovers and seven missed shots during that span, unable to decipher when the Bucs occasionally switched to a 1-3-1 zone.
"When you go into spells like that, you can't turn the ball over," Jones said. "You have to play harder on the offensive glass. If you can get shots up there, it's up to the big men to go get you extra possessions, because some nights the ball may not go in."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.