For the first 30 minutes Friday, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga showed flashes of a women’s basketball team to be reckoned with this season.
East Tennessee State, meanwhile, got better as the season opener for both teams progressed and pulled away late for a 77-60 win at McKenzie Arena.
The shorthanded Lady Mocs (0-1), who had five players in for 28 minutes or more, led 52-50 with 9:41 to play following two Bailey Dewart free throws. After that, the game belonged to ETSU (1-0), which went on a 24-4 run to blow the game open for good.
“I think they wanted it more than us,” said UTC sophomore Kayla Christopher, one of two returning starters for the Lady Mocs. “We stopped boxing out, stopped getting back on defense, and they killed us on the boards.”
Christopher led UTC with 16 points and seven rebounds. Transfer Whitney Hood, in her first game for the Lady Mocs, had 15 points and five rebounds. Tenisha Townsend, UTC’s other returning starter, hit four 3-pointers for her 12 points.
As the game wore on in the second half, UTC started to look a little tired. Shots were coming up short, ETSU was getting to rebounds first and the Lady Mocs never mounted any kind of rally.
Dewart, who played 28 minutes on a bad knee, said she thought fatigue “definitely was a factor.”
The Lady Bucs, coached by former UTC assistant Karen Kemp, were carried by point guard Tara Davis in the first half. She scored 18 points from all over the floor and finished with a game-high 23.
UTC trailed 34-33 at the half but had a 23-18 rebounding advantage. Like the scoring total, the rebounding numbers swung heavily in the Lady Bucs’ favor in the second when UTC had no answers for ETSU’s Destiny Mitchell and Gwen Washington.
Mitchell had 12 points and nine rebounds (six offensive) in the final 20 minutes, while Washington scored 12 second-half points. For the game, ETSU out-rebounded UTC 45-40.
“They killed us on the boards,” UTC coach Wes Moore said. “It seemed like a lot more than what’s on the stat sheet.”
There might not have been a lot of positives for UTC, but Friday did mark the return of Dewart. The redshirt junior missed all of last season with a knee injury, and most of the season before, and is still far from 100 percent.
In her second career start, she had five points and a career-high 11 rebounds.
“I felt pretty good, but as always a win would be nice,” Dewart said. “I felt like we needed to play a little bit harder at the end.”
The Lady Mocs visit fourth-ranked Tennessee on Monday and play at No. 19 Georgia next Friday.