No. 18.
With a bullet.
That's where the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball team finds itself in the newest Associated Press Top 25 poll.
No. 18. In all the land. Against the Fat-Cat Five conferences. Against all odds as a true low-to-mid-major program. And the climb has been steady and consistent. After coming in at No. 25 on Jan. 26, the Mocs have risen seven spots over the past month. Win out, including the Southern Conference tournament next week in Asheville, and it's not impossible to see them crack the top 15 by the time the NCAA tourney rolls around.
No offense to Will Wade's men's basketball Mocs, or the playoff performance of Russ Huesman's football team, but the biggest story of this year, or perhaps any athletic year at UTC, may be the ongoing success of Hall of Fame coach Jim Foster's Mocs.
And with those dreams should come other dreams, such as becoming a No. 4, 5 or 6 seed, the kind of seeding that might greatly enhance the chance for at least one NCAA tourney win, if not more.
After all, when you already own two wins against Top 10 teams at the time you played them, and those victories are against traditional giants Tennessee and Stanford, it just stands to reason that you've already earned the respect of the tournament selection committee.
Or as Foster noted during a Tuesday evening appearance on Sport Talk 102.3, "We've done what we're supposed to do."
Especially when only four of the schools currently ahead of the Mocs in the AP poll own more top-10 wins, and those schools -- Connecticut, South Carolina, Notre Dame and Tennessee -- along with Baylor, figure to make up the four No. 1 seeds.
But is UTC anywhere close to a No. 4, 5 or 6 seed in ESPN's latest Bracketology, despite that No. 18 ranking and a No. 24 NCAA RPI, up from 26 a week ago?
Nooooooo!
According to ESPN, the Mocs are currently projected as a No. 8 seed in the Greensboro Regional. They would supposedly play No. 9 Nebraska of the Big Ten with the winner facing South Carolina on its home court in Columbia in the round of 32.
Said Foster: "We've played two No. 1s (Tennessee and Notre Dame) already. I'd rather not have that (draw)."
Now most years, a No. 8 would be great. For while the Mocs have often played great schedules, they've rarely secured big wins, the previous exception being a victory over Tennessee in the fall of 2012 on Holly Warlick's first game as head coach of the Lady Vols.
Otherwise, it's been a few heartbreakers and a lot of heartache for brutal scheduling. Not this season, however. This has been the year in which all three of the Mocs' losses heading into Saturday's regular-season finale against visiting East Tennessee State have come against quality opponents, starting with the team's first defeat against South Florida, that two-point loss (59-57) accompanied by a furious second-half comeback after UTC trailed by 10 at the break. And South Florida is projected as a No. 6 seed but is behind UTC in the RPI, coming in at No. 25.
As for the 88-53 loss at No. 4 Notre Dame, yes, it was humbling, but 10 of the Fighting Irish's victories have come by 29 points or more.
Then there's the third defeat, a 57-52 loss at Arkansas State five days after the stunning win over UT. "That's on me," Foster said earlier in the season. "Bad scheduling."
Arkansas State stands second to Arkansas-Little Rock in the Sun Belt Conference standings with a 13-3 league mark, and those teams split their regular-season meetings.
None of this good work means the Mocs could necessarily duplicate such performances on a twice-weekly basis if thrown into the SEC, ACC or Big Ten. But we don't know they couldn't.
All we know for sure is that the Mocs were 2-1 against Top 10 teams this season. All we know for sure is that only four programs in the top 20 have more such wins and only four others have as many.
This doesn't mean everything is out of kilter. Foster now believes that one win in the SoCon tournament probably will assure the Mocs of an NCAA at-large bid if they don't win the title in Asheville.
"But I'd rather not leave it to that," he told the radio show. "I'd rather not leave our fate to people in a room discussing my team."
Even then, he should have legitimate hope for justice, since Mercer's Sybil Blalock is on the 10-person committee, along with Ohio Valley Conference rep Bradley Walker.
But it shouldn't come down to politics. Foster's Mocs have done what they're supposed to do to become an attractive seed to the selection committee. Assuming they win the SoCon tourney, any seed lower than a No. 6 would be the worst example of madness in March.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.