JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – East Tennessee State University basketball fans exited Freedom Hall on Saturday mostly satisfied.
The Buccaneers dominated their Southern Conference rivals from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 96-70, shooting an other-worldly 61 percent (36-for-59) from the field and winning nearly every statistical category. They did not, however, send fans home with free chicken.
Area Chick-fil-A restaurants sponsor a promotion in which every spectator at home games gets a voucher for a free sandwich should an opposing player miss two consecutive free throws. Though the Mocs shot just 13-of-19 at the line, there were no consecutive misses.
That fact, however, was of no solace to UTC coach Lamont Paris, who felt his team did not compete well enough during the game’s early telling moments. Despite a shooting barrage that nearly knocked the Mocs out early, they trailed only 41-33 with 3:23 left in the first half.
They started the second half down 18.
“The whole game was pretty frustrating,” Paris said. “Even in the first half, I didn’t like how we played and we were making some boneheaded decisions at times and had some good shots we didn’t make, but after all that with three minutes to play it’s an eight-point game.
“You have to realize that for what it is and go into halftime and regroup and come back out with your finest, but we didn’t do that.”
The Mocs (7-10, 2-2) led once, 14-13 on a Thomas Smallwood 3-pointer, but the Bucs (13-4, 3-1) caught fire behind super sub Tray Boyd III and Bo Hodges to stretch it to 16 midway through the half. UTC, behind its own spark off the bench, Donovann Toatley, rallied to get under 10 before the killing 11-1 rally to end the half.
ETSU 7-footer Lucas N’Guessan scored six of his eight first-half points during the run, sending the frustrated Mocs to the halftime on a sour note.
“They are a really good team full of good shooters,” UTC forward Ramon Vila said. “They were on fire at the beginning and it was kind of frustrating. Come on, you’re going to make some shots, but not like that. As a team, we are struggling when teams get big leads on us. We get frustrated and don’t know how to act, so that is definitely something that has to turn around.”
The Bucs, who outscored the Mocs 48-28 in the paint, used their size advantage in the second half and the penetration from guards Boyd (team-high 19 points), Patrick Good and Isaiah Tisdale to create easy looks.
“I thought we deviated on how we had just practiced defending ball screens, even right from the first couple of buckets they made,” Paris said. “We just didn’t do what we had practiced to do.”
Two bright spots for the Mocs were the efforts, even when trailing badly, from Toatley and Vila. Toatley played a team-high 32 minutes off the bench and led UTC with 19 points on 8-of-14 shooting, while Vila was 5-for-7 shooting in adding 12 points and a team-high six rebounds.
“I pulled Donovann over to the side because he was doing some good things,” Paris said. “The best things he did, to me, were not the basketball plays. He was gathering his guys and telling them good stuff. He made a really good play call at one point at a very appropriate situation. I thought he competed very well.”
Toatley believes the fact the Mocs continued to play hard even as the deficit grew to 30 late is a good sign for the rest of the season.
“You can always take out of it that our guys never quit, even though the score got out of hand,” he said. “I told my guys to keep on fighting, which is always a positive you can take from a game, win or lose.”
It could have, at least in one case, been worse.
“We missed a couple of free throws, but at least the fans didn’t get any free chicken,” he said with a laugh. “I was definitely thinking about that when I was up there. I can’t let them get free Chick-fil-A and the win.”
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6296. Follow him on Twitter @youngsports22.