The Samford women’s basketball team likes to make its opponents make mistakes and use its defense to create chances to score in ugly games.
Saturday afternoon in Birmingham, the Bulldogs’ scrappy defense and opportunistic offense caused No. 20 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga a lot of problems early, but the Mocs pulled themselves together late for a 56-49 win that kept them unbeaten in Southern Conference play.
UTC (24-3, 12-0) was coming off three straight double-figure wins, but in the first half it turned the ball over 10 times and shot just 6-for-24 from the floor. The Mocs’ struggles had them trailing 18-16 at halftime, and that could have been much worse if Samford had shot better.
“When you’re winning games by 30 you can take chances, but you’re developing bad habits,” UTC coach Jim Foster said on the postgame radio broadcast. “But when you’re in a game where a team runs an offense that is a reaction to your actions, going for steals is a very bad idea because you will pay quickly.
“(Samford) did a very good job, and we did a very poor job defensively. Then offensively we didn’t have a lot of ball movement and as a result we weren’t scoring.”
The Bulldogs (14-13, 7-5) increased their lead to seven points on a layup by Hannah Nichols with 14:54 remaining in the game, but UTC started hitting shots and began chipping away at the lead. The Mocs moved in front to stay with 9:39 left, when Jasmine Joyner stole the ball and got the ball to senior Ka’Vonne Towns for a layup.
The Mocs pushed the lead to eight on a 3-pointer by Moses Johnson with 4:40 remaining, but Samford stormed back to cut the lead to one on two occasions, the last with 2:11 to play. On the next possession, UTC’s Alicia “Red” Payne made a pass to Keiana Gilbert, who made a big basket off the glass with the shot clock running down to push the lead back to 50-47.
“We work on stepping up when the shot clock gets low,” Gilbert said. “So when Red drove it, I saw there were two seconds left and I was open, so I hit it off the glass.
“We had to start being more aggressive offensively and execute on offense and be determined to get stops on defense.”
UTC sealed its 20th consecutive win with field goals by Gilbert and Chelsey Shumpert and four free throws by Towns.
“The second half was night and day,” Foster said. “First half we shoot 25 percent, second half we shoot 65 percent; first half we have 10 turnovers, second half we have five turnovers.
“They did some things, but we have a lot of stuff in our offense and you can’t guard it all. … But we started to do what we do, and the result was a lot better in the second half.”
Joyner led the Mocs with 13 points, seven rebounds and six blocked shots. Gilbert had 12 points, Shumpert added 11 and Towns went 6-for-6 at the free-throw line and finished with 10 points.
Samford was led by Destiney Elliott and Hannah Nichols with 15 points each.
UTC will play Monday night at 7 against Mercer in Macon, Ga., and close out the regular season at home Saturday against East Tennessee State.
Contact Jim Tanner at jtanner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6478. Follow him at twitter.com/JFTanner.