PITTSBURGH – University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball coach Lamont Paris sat at the podium late Friday night, visibly upset. Next to him sat two of his UTC players, senior Silvio De Sousa and sophomore Malachi Smith.
The wild ride of a season, with more smooth roads but a few bumpy spots, had come to a crushing conclusion, with Smith’s final attempt glancing off the back iron and giving Illinois a 54-53 win over the Mocs at PPG Paints Arena in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Over the course of the season, this Mocs team had proven it could win big games with an experienced roster, but most of that was done in a sort of obscurity not uncommon for mid-major conference programs.
But this was the big stage, and sometimes the team that plays the best isn’t the one that gets the win. The 13th-seeded Mocs had done that, with the Southern Conference champions jumping out to a 14-point first-half lead and holding the advantage on the scoreboard for 38 minutes and 34 seconds of game clock to just 25 seconds for fourth-seeded Illinois (23-9) of the powerful Big Ten.
So yes, the emotions in the moment were warranted – because the Mocs lost a game they had every chance of winning.