CHARLESTON, S.C. — John Shulman dissected the entire video of his basketball team’s 86-74 loss at the College of Charleston before he slept Thursday night.
But sitting in a conference room on the 14th floor of the Holiday Inn Riverview on Friday, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach couldn’t bring himself to watch the final 3.2 seconds of his Mocs’ 56-54 Southern Conference win over The Citadel last month on a buzzer-beater by Keegan Bell.
“I’m a little different,” Shulman said. “What if it don’t go in? What if we don’t get a jump ball on the play before? What if (Citadel’s) Cameron Wells had got the rebound and dribbled it out? What if (Zach) Urbanus had made the shot?
“I’d just as soon bypass all of that.”
Shulman’s scary movie had a fantastic finish and gave UTC an important victory even if he didn’t want to see it again.
Bell converted basketball’s version of a hook-and-ladder play to beat the Bulldogs with a difficult 3-pointer from the right wing as time expired.
“That was a special moment, and that was fun,” Bell said Friday at the team hotel. “The biggest thing I remember is the box-out we didn’t do on a free throw, and that gave them the bucket to go ahead. That was a huge mess-up for us.
“It almost lost us that game.”
But with 3.2 seconds to go, Chris Early rebounded and threw to Jeremy Saffore, who got it to Bell for the 3.
“Keegan made that last shot,” said UTC freshman Josh Odem, who had nine points on five shot attempts in Thursday’s loss. “That’s the only thing I remember from that game.”
The Mocs (13-11, 5-6) hope it doesn’t take another dramatic finish to beat The Citadel (11-12, 5-6) tonight in McAlister Fieldhouse. But UTC is 2-7 on opponents’ home courts this season, having beat Jacksonville State (now 10-12) in December and Georgia Southern (6-18) on Jan. 6.
“You have to know how to grind out games and win in tough atmospheres, and that’s common for young teams to struggle on the road,” Shulman said. “I don’t consider our guys inexperienced anymore, but when you’re going on the road, you need to have gone through wars.”
But it will certainly take a better performance over 40 minutes than the Mocs showed in the first 25 minutes Thursday, when they were down 29 points to the Cougars. A 16-0 spurt was part of a 29-10 run that pulled the Mocs within 66-56 with 8:40 to go.
“We came out slow, didn’t know what to expect and kind of lagged and picked a bad time to do that,” said Early, who had nine points and five rebounds in 15 minutes Thursday. “I don’t know what it was. Maybe we didn’t have the right attitude going into the game.”
That is part of what disappointed Shulman the most about Thursday’s game against the top team in the SoCon.
“It’s disappointing that we cannot stay with the process, and that we have no carry-over from two good games at home, where we were men and made hustle plays,” Shulman said. “Then we have no carry-over in the first half, and it’s like we left that team in Chattanooga.
“It’s not uncommon for a young team to go through that.”
So which of the multi-faced Mocs teams will appear in McAlister tonight to face the Bulldogs and all of the blue-and-gray-suited cadets standing inches from the end line?
Shulman probably can barely wait to watch.