The message to his team after Saturday’s 35-20 loss to Furman was one part disappointment and one part encouragement.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach Rusty Wright’s face was full of frustration as he met the assembled media late Saturday afternoon at Finley Stadium. The Mocs had just outplayed the 13th-ranked team in the Football Championship Subdivision for a good part of the game, but UTC had too many breakdowns on both sides of the ball to complete the upset of the Paladins.
Coming on the heels of an overtime loss at Wofford in which the Mocs couldn’t hold a late seven-point lead, Wright knows his team is hurting. He also knows the team’s remaining opponents – Samford, The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute – could not care less.
How this improved team, now 4-5 overall and 3-2 in the Southern Conference, handles the hurt will determine how Wright’s first season as head coach is viewed.
“With two hard losses like that, we’ll find out a lot about this team starting Monday,” he said. “We’ll find out who’s going to work.
“We have to find a way to finish. We’ve been right here in the fourth quarter in position to win the last two games and haven’t found a way to do it. We’ve got three games left, with a lot to play for and a lot of things to get better at.”
UTC did a lot right Saturday. Freshman running back Ailym Ford had another huge ground game with 180 yards. The offensive line consistently opened holes for him and also allowed quarterback Nick Tiano ample time to throw most of the time. Until the fourth quarter, UTC’s run defense was holding its own and the secondary had allowed only one pass longer than 20 yards.
Five first-half drives into Furman territory netted only 12 points, however, and the Mocs’ tackling – especially late, when they needed a defensive stop – fell off dramatically from the first half.
To a man, the Mocs believe they should have won their past two games. Tiano, a Baylor School graduate and fifth-year senior who played at Mississippi State before joining the Mocs before the 2017 season, has three games left in his collegiate career.
He plans to make the most of them and believes his teammates will as well.
“I’m really proud of this team,” he said. “Every week we come out and play four hard quarters, but I just think we haven’t put a complete game together yet. We’ve got three winnable games ahead of us, so we have to go back to work and see what happens.
“We play hard and we fight. These were two tough games we had a chance to win in back-to-back weeks. It’s just finding a way to win and taking advantage of the opportunities. If we do that, we can still be a really good team.”
Junior safety Brandon Dowdell, who had the fifth interception of his UTC career early in the game against Furman, joined Tiano in believing there is plenty of good football ahead for the Mocs, starting with Saturday’s 3 p.m. EST game at Samford (4-5, 3-3).
“It’s tough. Both sides of the ball, we played our tails off,” he said. “We just have to go out next week and correct some things. The message is to keep going. We played hard, and the big thing is to realize we still have a lot to play for.”
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6296. Follow him on Twitter @youngsports22.