As the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team prepared this week to host The Citadel in what will be the final home game for 14 seniors, Rusty Wright couldn’t help but recall his first impression of the 2019 Mocs.
“The first day of fall camp, I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ I was sweating it,” UTC’s first-year head coach said with a shake of his head. “We were nowhere near being a football team.”
There were days during practice under the melting Tennessee sun when the former UTC player and assistant would walk away from whatever drill was being butchered, his head down as he tried to find some reason to be optimistic or the right words to motivate his tired and sometimes confused players.
“We had a lot going on,” he said. “We were throwing a lot at them and demanding a lot from them it was tough on everybody.”
When UTC (5-5, 4-2 Southern Conference) takes the field at Finley Stadium for Saturday’s 2 p.m. kickoff against the Bulldogs (6-4, 4-2), Wright is happy to point out the Mocs will do so as a team far ahead of where he thought it would be and still with an outside shot to tie for the conference title.