Depth was the biggest question mark for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team entering this season. That was especially true after the preseason loss of Chuck Ester, whose knee injury pushed Johnathan Burroughs-Cook - the team's primary returning contributor off the bench - into the starting rotation.
Time and again, different Mocs have had their moments while spelling one of the five senior starters. But in Saturday's 82-78 home win against Samford, it was a collective effort.
UTC reserves chipped in 21 points against the Bulldogs, but their contributions went much deeper. Rodney Chatman made all six of his free throws and had a team-best three assists. Nat Dixon returned from missing one game for personal reasons and had four points, three rebounds and two steals. Trayvond Massenburg played six minutes in the first half, made a layup and had a nice feed to Dixon for another layup.
Makale Foreman continued his solid play with nine points in 15 minutes on three 3-pointers, which frustrated Samford coach Scott Padgett. The 6-foot-1 freshman guard has 45 shots this season, 39 of which are 3-pointers and 15 of which he has made.
"If you're going to get beat by him, it's got to be (because) you ran him off the line and he made some good move and he scored," Padgett said. "It can't be letting him do what he does, because here's the realistic thing: He's going to get a look because of Tre' (McLean), (Justin) Tuoyo, (Greg) Pryor, Casey Jones, but when the ball is kicked to him, I can't stop five feet short of him.
"I'm frustrated it happened letting him do what he does, not that he was the guy that beat us. To be honest with you, if you'd told me their bench has to beat us, I'd have felt better about it, because their starters are real good."
McCall seems to have settled on a rotation of eight to nine players: the five starters, with Chatman the first guard off the bench, Dixon the first wing, Makinde London the first post and Foreman as another guard. But the Mocs have shown the ability to be flexible, including using Massenburg in place of London in the first half Saturday.
McCall said the decision was about "focus level." London played nine minutes in the second half.
"I thought Massenburg and the rest of our team had a laser focus," McCall said. "He (London) didn't do anything necessarily wrong. I thought Massenburg's focus level from shootaround and from what our staff said in warmups was who I wanted to go with in the first half."
Last season, the bench was huge in helping the team advance to the NCAA tournament. This year, that will have to be the case as well.
"We can't win a game with five guys," Tuoyo said, "and the young guys came up and had great minutes for us. We just have guys that we can count on. We can leave everybody on the bench, and when it's their time to step up, they do their job and help us all in any way we need them."
The Mocs (15-4, 6-1 Southern Conference) host Virginia Military Institute (4-14, 1-6) at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.