UTC's Keiana Gilbert (20) shoots a three-point jumper. The Samford Bulldogs visited the Chattanooga Mocs in Southern Conference women's basketball action at McKenzie Arena on January 25, 2018. With only a year's difference in age, sisters Aryanna and Keiana Gilbert have had their basketball careers intertwined throughout. Now they get to end the college portion of those careers together.
The two, along with Anna Claire Noblit and team manager Chase Clounch, will be honored at senior day today for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's final home game, against Wofford at 2 p.m. in a doubleheader.
The UTC men also host Wofford, at 5.
The Gilberts came from Columbia (Tenn.) Central High School, with Aryanna joining the Mocs in 2013 when Wes Moore was still the coach. Moore then left for North Carolina State, which paved the way for the program to bring in women's basketball Hall of Fame coach Jim Foster. Keiana joined the program a year later.
Aryanna, who missed all but eight games of the 2014-15 season with a knee injury, has been on the roster for all of Foster's 118 wins at UTC, including his 800th and 900th career wins. Keiana's teams have won 89 games.
"I know her body has been through a lot in her four years here, so I'm just grateful that she did come back another year," Keiana said.
The two have been part of the Mocs' Southern Conference tournament dominance, with the program winning five consecutive tournament titles. Aryanna has four championships, while Keiana has three.
"Aryanna has started every year," Foster said. "She's a glue player, and this year we've asked her to do more, to score more, and she's taken on that responsibility. Keiana is a player that you look at, if you look at the stats in offensive categories, she'll be in the top 10 to 15 of every category that there is to keep a stat on. She gets numbers.
"As close as they are, (senior day) is a good opportunity to spend that time together in that setting. They wouldn't have had it, they wouldn't have both been in that uniform if that hadn't happened."
Aryanna, who holds the UTC single-season record for field-goal accuracy (62 percent), has expanded her game this season for the young Mocs. She's averaging 13 points per game (previous career best was 7.8), 6.2 rebounds (3.8) and 2.6 assists (1.5) and has made 32 3-pointers after entering the season with a four-year total of 15. She's logging 36.8 minutes per game, second on the team behind her sister.
Keiana has 1,362 career points, 22 from moving into 10th all-time in the program. She's also fourth in blocks with 88 and ninth in field goals made with 559. She's started all 122 games of her career and has averaged nearly 35 minutes per game in that span.
In her seventh career game, she had 27 points and five rebounds in a 67-63 win over fourth-ranked Tennessee on Nov. 26, 2014.
The road to claiming what would be Aryanna's fifth SoCon title and Keiana's fourth is the steepest yet. The Mocs were 56-4 against SoCon competition during Foster's tenure before this season but endured their fifth league loss of 2017-18 Thursday night, falling 50-45 for Furman's first season sweep of UTC since 2002. With a loaded Mercer team expected to win the league and UTC being considered a young team entering the year, it looked as though it would be the program's biggest challenge yet during Foster's time, and with five healthy newcomers and six playing vital roles on the team, the season has played out that way despite a solid nonconference record.
Foster has called out the team's lack of toughness after back-to-back home losses to East Tennessee State and Furman, and part of that starts at the top with the seniors, who have grown used to the challenges and always have responded.
"We know there are a lot of new people on the team that haven't been here for the championships we have won," Keiana said. "They might not know what it takes to get there, so I think we need to let them know that what we're doing now isn't going to be good enough and that we need to keep our focus on the main goal right now."
Added Aryanna: "I'll take my team over anybody. We know we can do it; it's just us grinding and actually playing like we're capable of playing. I'm not thinking about senior day; all I really care about is getting this win, setting the tone and showing teams that we are going to bounce back, so I really won't think about senior day until the game is over."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.