Befitting a Hall of Fame coach, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball coach Jim Foster is a cosmopolitan guy. He appreciates bright lights and big cities, and preferably far enough from home that an airplane is needed to get him there.
So while UTC fans are no doubt thrilled with the NCAA women’s tournament selection committee sending his Mocs to the relatively close locale of Starkville, Miss., to face the hometown Mississippi State Bulldogs on Friday afternoon, Foster was at least partially hoping for a different venue.
“I’d love for my players to step on a plane and fly somewhere,” he said at the University Center around 8 p.m. Monday, not long after the Bridgeport Regional was the last of the four called during the selection show on ESPN. “Maybe that will be a goal for us next year.”
UTC coach Jim Foster talks with Queen Alford during the game against Harvard Monday, January 4, 2016, at McKenzie Arena in Chattanooga, Tenn.But whether their travel carriage of choice is a plane, train or automobile, at least the Mocs are dancing, their invitation sealed more than a week ago when they won the Southern Conference tournament and the automatic bid that goes with it.
That grand accomplishment earned them a solid No. 12 seed to Mississippi State’s No. 5. Let UTC advance past that opening round for the first time since the 2003-04 season, when Mocs assistant Katie Galloway Burrows was still playing, and a second-round win against either No. 4 seed Michigan State or 13 seed Belmont would put them on a plane this season to, gulp, Bridgeport, Conn., where they almost assuredly would get a chance to exact revenge on three-time defending national champ UConn for that 79-31 humbling the Huskies put on them back on Nov. 30.