After last Saturday’s loss at East Tennessee State, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga senior center Justin Tuoyo said people were going to see “a different team” in the Mocs’ next game. Senior forward Casey Jones added recently that the team had lost “that dog” in games but had found it.
For a game, at least, they were right.
The ticked-off Mocs blew out UNC Greensboro by 23 on Thursday in a game that wasn’t even that close. The Spartans came in with a 7-3 Southern Conference record and a two-game win streak over the Mocs, but everything fell the right way for UTC – most notably a 3-pointer by Greg Pryor as he was falling out of bounds after a steal. That was awarded the top spot on ESPN SportsCenter’s top 10 plays of the night.
Coming off their first two-game losing streak in over two seasons, the Mocs went to work early Monday morning, with a rough practice to help the team get focused.
“It was good. We came at each other the whole practice,” Tuoyo said Thursday. “Everyone battled each other, tried to make each other better, and you could tell tonight how it showed. We just cared for each other more than we had in the past. We just had to get to what we’ve been doing and it’ll work for us, and it showed tonight.”
The Mocs have put together completely different performances in their last two appearances at McKenzie Arena. They were lifeless in a 16-point loss to Virginia Military Institute on Jan. 25 but were the opposite of that against the Spartans. The Mocs shot 56 percent from the floor and 55 percent from 3-point range and had a season-high 21 assists. Coach Matt McCall said the team “learned” from the loss to the Keydets.
“We have to have that focus, that edge, and the second we don’t have it, we’re just OK,” McCall said. “We can’t get VMI back, but if we learn from it and grow from it, I’m OK with that. The biggest thing is we have to have that chip. Was it disappointing? Yes, but coming out of last week, maybe that’s what this team needed to go through.
“Everything we’re trying to achieve as a team and a program is right in front of it. We’re going to have to go through different things to get there, and maybe that setback last week was really something we really needed to go through. You see it across the country: Really good teams, they have setbacks throughout the course of the year, but the best ones respond from them the right way and they learn from it.”
On Thursday, the Mocs responded. They’ll have another opportunity today against Western Carolina in the second game of a doubleheader. The women host Samford at 2.
“We did what we said we’d do Saturday after the game,” Jones said. “We came out and became a better, more focused, more aggressive team, but it’s still just one game.
“Saturday we’ll be ready.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.