Thursday night was a case of the “next man up” for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team. But the next man up in this case was a player who had been in that position many times before.
Ronrico White played all 40 minutes in the Mocs’ 66-60 Southern Conference win over Western Carolina at McKenzie. He finished with 11 points, five rebounds and three assists, playing point guard exclusively due to the absence of sophomore point Greg Pryor, who has a lower-body injury and is listed as “day-to-day.”
“Even though I play off the ball, I still look at myself as a point guard,” White said. “Me and Greg, we’re point guards in practice, and we’re both leaders. It’s good to have two leaders and two ball-handlers, so when Greg went down, we had to step up.
“It was a team effort. It wasn’t just me: Guys helped out, played good defense and they scored. We knew we didn’t have to do anything crazy to win; we just had to be ourselves and play good defense.”
White starts at the 2-guard position and is considered the backup point guard. He has played plenty of point in his four seasons with the Mocs, so Thursday’s role wasn’t a huge change to what he normally does. The biggest adjustment was that he did it the entire game, putting up a solid stat line while holding 16-ppg scorer Rhett Harrelson to half of his average while committing four turnovers.
“When you’re down key guys, other guys have to step up,” UTC coach Will Wade said Thursday. “Rico was phenomenal; his offensive stat line was good, but he did a tremendous job on Harrelson, who hardly got any clean looks.
“That was a huge part of the game plan.”
Harrelson came into the game making 3.5 3-pointers per game. White limited him to five attempts with two made 3s — one of which came after UTC center Justin Tuoyo’s ninth blocked shot of the game, as the ball sailed to the 5-foot-10 Catamount around the 3-point line.
“He likes to get lost in transition and trail behind,” White explained of his defensive effort. “I had to keep an eye on him, but we did a very good job of communicating, stopping the ball in transition and then finding him, because we knew that if it goes up, it goes in.
“We just had to find him at all times and keep a body on him at all times.”
White and the Mocs (10-7, 3-1) will renew a rivalry this afternoon when they visit East Tennessee State (9-4, 4-1), which is back in the conference for the first time since the 2004-05 season. When the game begins, there’s a good chance that the 6-foot-3 senior from Knoxville will be back at point guard and log major minutes there.
“We’re just treating it like another conference game in a tough, hostile environment,” White said. “They’re a good team. I’m sure Coach Wes (Long) will have a good (scouting report), and we’ll be ready to play up there.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.