The Southern Conference championship the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team earned last season erased a lot of bad memories from missed title opportunities for the Mocs.
Especially Johnathan Burroughs-Cook.
With UTC teammate Greg Pryor, Burroughs-Cook formed one of the state's most lethal backcourts at Ridgeway High School in Memphis during the 2012-13 season, when the Roadrunners were Tennessee's best prep team. They beat eventual state champion Southwind two out of three times - including a win in the district final - but were disqualified prior to the Region 8-AAA championship for using an ineligible player who, according to some reports, was 22 years old.
"They didn't want to see us win that championship," Burroughs-Cook said, adding that the accused player "hardly played."
That's what made the SoCon title that much sweeter.
"I felt that when we won that championship, it replaced every single championship I could have got in high school," Burroughs-Cook said. "It was an awesome, awesome feeling."
His post-prep playing career began at College of Charleston, where he started six of 24 games as a freshman. His time there coincided with the two-year reign coach Doug Wojcik, who was fired after players, assistant coaches and staffers in the athletic department said Wojcik had verbally abused them.
To make matters worse, Jordan Mincy, the assistant coach who was Burroughs-Cook's primary recruiter to Charleston and a fellow Ridgeway graduate, left and took a job at Toledo.
Burroughs-Cook left and played a season at Southwest Community College in Memphis before joining the Mocs in 2015. He had a great start - a 23-point performance in the team's upset victory at Georgia - and a great finish last season, making a key block in the SoCon tournament quarterfinals and retrieving the ball before passing it to Peyton Woods, who found Tre' McLean for a 3-pointer in the team's 59-54 win over Samford.
The shooting guard averaged six points per game off the bench in 2015-16, and he has started all 26 games for the Mocs this season, averaging 9.6 points per game.
"With Johnathan, you can see a player that's made tremendous strides," UTC coach Matt McCall said. "He's really grown from one year to the next. Maybe his leash was shorter than other guys last season, but he was completely focused on doing the right thing. He got better in the offseason and plays the game at an extremely high level.
"It wasn't easy to walk into what he did last year, with that team and all those guys back from the previous year, to be able to go in there, perform and play the way he did."
Burroughs-Cook was the youngest of three boys in his family, and he started playing basketball at age 4 He's gone against older, bigger players, which explains his fearless nature on the court.
Once the season ends, he expects to hire an agent and will pursue a professional playing career. Off the court, he will graduate in May with a degree in psychology, but those are things he's not worrying about at the moment.
"I know this year we've gone through some ups and downs as far as not getting the No. 1 spot (in the conference)," he said. "We've come up short against a couple of teams, but it's going to count when it's time to play in the tournament. We just have to pick up some stuff and get back to it. We have to get that chip back on our shoulder. We've got to find it.
"I'm taking things a day at a time. My final college basketball season is winding down, so I'm going to enjoy every moment on and off the court; socializing with people, connecting well."
And for Burroughs-Cook, hopefully winning one more championship to replace the one he didn't get in high school.