Unhappy with what he had seen from his upperclassmen and with his team in the midst of a two-game losing streak in his first season as women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Jim Foster turned to a talented five-player freshman class on Dec. 1, 2013.
Aryanna Gilbert, Moses Johnson, Jasmine Joyner and Chelsey Shumpert, unknown to most then, were among those who made a name for themselves that day. They were part of a big comeback, helping erase a 14-point deficit with a 27-11 run to beat Colorado State 59-57.
That game let the Hall of Fame coach know he could depend on that group, and four years later, nothing has changed.
This season's UTC's seniors finished their Southern Conference regular-season careers with a 30-0 mark at home by defeating Wofford 76-56 on Saturday. The fifth member of that freshman-now-senior class, Whitney Hartlage, transferred to Bellarmine University after the 2013-14 season, and she is averaging 9.1 points and 3.3 assists per game for the NCAA Division II 20th-ranked Knights. Injuries led to redshirts for Gilbert and Shumpert.
"This class identified itself as a winner freshman year," Foster said Saturday. "We had a bunch of veteran players that thought they knew more, so I sat them and put (then-senior) Taylor Hall in with a bunch of freshmen and went on to win the game. They got it early and haven't lost it since."
It took a year or so for the SoCon to recover from losing Appalachian State, Davidson, Elon and Georgia Southern. They were replaced with East Tennessee State University and Mercer, the teams the Mocs have defeated in the past two SoCon championship games.
But now other teams have improved. Furman is better, competitive even with the loss of four-year starting point guard Whitney Bunn. Wofford and UNC Greensboro, afterthoughts in recent seasons, have wins over ETSU and UTC, respectively, so the Mocs know that heading into this week's conference tournament, being good may not be enough.
But this team - and this senior class - is ready for the challenge. The top-seeded Mocs (18-10) face Western Carolina (8-21) at 11:30 a.m. Saturday in the SoCon tournament quarterfinals in Asheville, N.C.
"The league has definitely got harder, from freshman year to senior year," Joyner said Saturday, "but it's made us more together. We just had to step up and be leaders, but this season has gone by really fast.
"We had a hard schedule this year to prepare us, and it's paid off. We've just got to continue to grow and get ready for next week."