The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team was unable to overcome a poor start Friday, falling behind by 15 points by halftime and losing 72-51 in a Southern Conference game at UNC Greensboro.
The Mocs (9-21, 3-14) will conclude the regular season Sunday at 1 p.m. at Virginia Military Institute. With UNCG's win coupled with an East Tennessee State loss at home to Wofford, the Spartans and Buccaneers are tied at the top of the league.
The Bucs host Furman on Sunday, while the Spartans draw Samford.
The Mocs played Friday without sophomore point guard Rodney Chatman, who missed his second consecutive game with an ankle injury. Chatman went through practice but didn't show enough for coach Lamont Paris to let him play.
Makale Foreman played most of the game at the point. A natural shooting guard, Foreman struggled against the Spartans' length and full-court pressure, finishing with five of the team's 18 turnovers. He did have 15 points on 4-for-6 shooting from 3-point range, while Joshua Phillips had 17 points and 10 rebounds.
That was the 6-foot-8 senior's third double-double of the season - including both meetings against UNCG.
The Mocs led 10-8 after five quick points from Nat Dixon, but the Spartans went on a 10-0 run and outscored the Mocs 23-6 the rest of the first half to build a 31-16 halftime edge. The Mocs were held to 29 percent shooting in the first half and committed nine turnovers, while the Spartans shot only 38 percent but had 15 points in the paint in the opening 20 minutes.
"It was a bad first half overall," Paris said on the postgame radio broadcast. "It looked worse because we didn't finish. I felt like we didn't do a good job in the first half, but you're down 16-31 at the half and there were probably nine points I would call pretty easy. That changes the whole scope of the half.
"In the second half, I felt we did a better job of attacking."
The home team quickly built a 22-point lead in the second, but the Mocs slowly crept back in, cutting the margin to 15 twice, the second on a three-point play by Phillips with 9:33 remaining. The Spartans answered with an Isaiah Miller layup and a Demetrius Troy transition 3-pointer, and the Mocs never again got closer than 17.
Miller and Marvin Smith each scored 14 points to pace the Spartans, with Jordy Kuiper adding 11. The Mocs did a solid job on Francis Alonso, the second-leading scorer in the SoCon at 16.5 points per game. Alonso finished with seven points on a pair of 3-pointers and a free throw.
The winner of the Mocs-Keydets game will draw the 9 seed for next week's conference tournament, while the loser will assume the 10 spot. Phillips said that having a good performance against VMI - which won the first meeting on a shot with six seconds remaining - would be helpful going into the SoCon tournament.
"I feel like momentum can change everything for a team," said Phillips, the only Moc who has played on an NCAA tournament team (2016 with Middle Tennessee State). "I've seen the worse team in the league win a conference tournament. Momentum can change a whole team. You have to play hard and go into conference play with some momentum that can really catapult us into the tournament."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.