BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball team kept putting up the 3-pointers Wednesday night at the Pete Hanna Center, but they weren't falling.
The Lady Mocs couldn't get anything going offensively against Samford and lost 61-49 in a rematch of last season's Southern Conference tournament championship game.
UTC (8-11, 5-5 SoCon) won that game after capturing its 11th straight regular-season title. To make it 12 in a row the Lady Mocs might have to win their remaining 10 league games and hope for some help.
On Wednesday, the Lady Mocs shot 32.3 percent from the field and hit just 4 of 27 3s. Samford, meanwhile, went 10 of 22 from long range. The Bulldogs also had a 43-32 rebounding advantage.
"We're not playing as hard as we need to play or with the urgency we need to play with," UTC coach Wes Moore said. "We're getting our [tails] kicked on the boards, and I'm getting about tired of that."
Whitney Hood and Kayla Christopher scored 14 points each to lead UTC, which has lost three of its last four games. Savannah Hill led Samford with 19 points and 13 rebounds.
Samford (13-6, 6-4) led 31-23 at the half and was up 47-33 with 14:18 left in the game. The Bulldogs then went more than 5 minutes without scoring. Unfortunately for the Lady Mocs, it was a dry spell for both teams and they couldn't make a run.
The Lady Mocs haven't dropped five SoCon games in a season since Moore's first team in 1998-99, when UTC finished 10-17 overall, 8-10 in league play. That was also Moore's only other season with more than 10 losses.
After three straight road games, UTC returns to McKenzie Arena on Saturday when it hosts Western Carolina.