It was Monday, his first 2015 Southern Conference tournament game still five days away, which meant University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball coach Will Wade had time to look both ahead and behind.
So when does he believe his 22-9 Mocs, a shimmering 15-3 in the SoCon, turned the corner, beginning once more to resemble the Mocs monsters of yore, when UTC always was at or near the top of the league?
"I'd say after we lost to Wofford at home," Wade said. "Last year, we were almost surprised when we won. But we were really disappointed after the Wofford game. We thought we should have won. I think we've been that way ever since. We expect to win."
This is not to say anyone should expect the Mocs to cut down the nets as SoCon tourney champs inside the Asheville Civic Center on Monday night, ESPN's cameras there to capture the madness. Wofford still stands a lofty No. 51 in the latest NCAA RPI, ahead of such traditional basketball giants as UCLA (52), Indiana (54), Syracuse (63) and UConn (70).
The Mocs are a salty No. 100, inexplicably down from last week's No. 96, despite having won six in a row. But they aren't 51st. Despite last month's stirring win at Wofford, the Terriers' lone home loss of the year, no one should expect UTC to win if they meet a third time this season.
Yet Wade is also right to point to last year's 18-15 mark, which ended with a loss to Georgia Southern in the Mocs' tourney opener, and say, "We were a smoke-and-mirror team last year. We're a lot better team this year, a lot better program."
Few coaches rebuild a program as quickly as Wade appears to be rebuilding the Mocs without a past blueprint for success. Wade's four seasons as Virginia Commonwealth coach Shaka Smart's assistant are well-documented. They produced the stunning 2011 Final Four run and a 111-37 record.
They also taught Wade much about tournament basketball.
"Shaka's as good as they come when it comes to coaching in tournaments," Wade said. "The biggest thing he taught me was that it's all about your team's mindset. Make sure they feel good about themselves. Also, focus on the small stuff. An inbounds play. Getting an offensive rebound on a missed free throw. Little things can make a big difference at tournament time."
So can the head coach's demeanor.
"I'll be calmer this week," he said. But Wade also added, "You can make a mistake changing everything you do."
There's no perfect plan, of course. If there were, the same teams would win their conference tourneys every year. But having failed to win even once since 2009, having gone to the NCAA tournament only twice otherwise since the 1997 Sweet 16 run, the men Mocs would seem due.
Then there are the women, who seem to go almost every season and can probably expect to go this spring whether they win in Asheville or not, given their No. 17 national ranking this week.
Not that the women are leaving anything to chance.
Unlike so many regular-season road trips, when coach Jim Foster takes them to a historical place for knowledge beyond basketball, this is a business trip.
"We don't really do anything," said guard Alicia "Red" Payne. "We do have an off day, but I'm really just looking forward to sleeping in."
Eat. Sleep. Play. Advance.
That's the game plan this time of year for both the UTC men and UTC women, and pretty much every other one of Division I's 351 schools. It's the formula both Wade and Foster hope leads them to SoCon tourney titles and the automatic NCAA bids that come with that.
But just to make sure this winter's success isn't taken for granted, Wade expects to closely follow the recent past to achieve future success.
"You still have to pay attention to detail," he said. "Make sure that there's no slippage, because it can get away from you real quick."
And if that momentum, that edge, gets away from you now, there's no time left to get it back. There's only a very long, sad wait until next year.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.