UTC head coach Matt McCall and the UTC bench follow the action. The Western Carolina Catamounts visited the Chattanooga Mocs at McKenzie Area in Southern Conference basketball action Thursday January 14, 2015.Although friends, Matt McCall and Steve Forbes are no strangers to being on opposite sides of a rivalry.
So today shouldn’t be any different for them.
Their respective basketball teams, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and East Tennessee State University, will play in an important Southern Conference game at 5 p.m. at McKenzie Arena. ETSU’s Bucs (11-6, 4-0) and UTC’s Mocs (15-3, 4-1) are currently the top two teams in the conference.
With a Mocs win, they would have handed Mercer, Wofford and ETSU their lone league losses.
McCall was a graduate assistant at Florida when Forbes was an assistant coach to Bruce Pearl at Tennessee.
“He has a talented group and he’s done a great job in the short amount of time he’s been there,” McCall said Thursday. “It’s going to be a battle for 40 minutes.”
The Mocs swept the season series last season, winning 74-71 in overtime in Johnson City on Casey Jones’ 3-pointer at the buzzer and 67-59 in Chattanooga. ETSU fired coach Murry Bartow and brought in Forbes, who quickly did a complete makeover of the team.
He brought in transfer guards Ge’Lawn Guyn (Cincinnati) and Deuce Bello (Missouri) from Division I programs, along with T.J. Cromer from Columbia State Community College. Guyn and Cromer combine to average 32.9 points per game, and both shoot over 40 percent from 3-point range.
Some returning players’ roles have been reduced, but the Bucs still have a number of players who can be dangerous if the opportunity arises. They have gone through some ups and downs with a victory over Georgia Tech and a loss to Tennessee Tech but have looked good in SoCon wins over Western Carolina, UNC Greensboro, Virginia Military Institute and Samford.
“This game is really exciting, but we can’t get into the fan base and the excitement of the game,” UTC junior guard Greg Pryor said. “We just have to focus on what we need to do to stop them and what we need to do on the offensive end.”
Despite having the largest arena in the Southern Conference – McKenzie Arena seats 10,500 – the Mocs are third in attendance this season, averaging 2,674 fans per game. Mercer (3,084) and ETSU (2,721) average more.
McCall hopes that starts to change today.
“I challenge everyone in Chattanooga, especially students, we need to get everyone out at the game on Saturday,” he said. “This team deserves it, and for these seniors we have seven home games left and they’re not going to be on the floor here ever again. Hopefully the city of Chattanooga can get behind them and fill our arena, because we need a great environment on Saturday. You’re talking about two of the best teams in the Southern Conference going at it on Saturday afternoon.
“We need to get as many fans in there as possible and make it a fun environment.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.