UTC forward Tre’ McLean, right, tips a rebound over ULM guard Prince Cooper during the Mocs’ basketball game against Louisiana-Monroe at Finley Stadium on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.That chip Tre’ McLean plays with on his shoulder? It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
And that’s a good thing for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team.
As with so many of the Mocs, McLean was seemingly under-recruited as a senior at West Ashley High School in Charleston, S.C. He signed with Queens University in Charlotte, N.C., where as a 6-3, 180-pound freshman, he started 17 games and led the team with 37 steals.
When Will Wade took over as UTC coach in May 2013, he brought longtime friend and Queens coach Wes Long with him, who in turn brought McLean. Wade left after the 2014-15 season to become coach at Virginia Commonwealth University, but second-year Mocs coach Matt McCall has benefited from the presence of McLean, now a 6-5 senior.
“I really got to know and love those guys during my time at Queens,” McLean said of Wade and Long. “The decision to come here wasn’t easy, but those guys still support me. It’s times I think about what I would have become if I had stayed at Queens, but I’m here now and I don’t regret anything that’s happened in the past.”
After a slow start to his Mocs career (he averaged 4.3 points, 3.0 rebounds as a sophomore) that included missing 19 consecutive 3-pointers, he exploded as a junior last season, averaging 12.1 points and 6.3 rebounds on the way to earning first-team all-Southern Conference honors.
It’s safe to say that after Tuesday night’s 96-85 win over one-time bitter rival Marshall, his arc is still going up. McLean scored a career-high 35 points on 11-for-17 shooting from the field and was 10-for-13 from the foul line.
For the season, he’s averaging 14.8 points and 4.9 rebounds, both second on the team behind center Justin Tuoyo. In his past three games, McLean had a 12-point performance sandwiched between a 26-point game against Coastal Carolina and Tuesday’s outburst.
But that chip?
It’s here to stay.
“That chip will never leave, because that’s all I’ve known since I picked up a basketball,” he said. “I’ve always got the drive to be better. I’m hard-working and I pride myself in that, and it’s all-around, not just on the basketball, just in life. It’s in classes; as a family member, a son, a boyfriend. I pride myself in working hard and I really try to strive for perfection and achieving greatness.
“That chip is a gift and a curse, but I embrace it.”
On Tuesday, his buckets came in bunches.
With the Mocs off to a slow start and a couple of players in early foul trouble, McLean scored eight out of 10 UTC points in a five-minute span in the first half. The other seven first-half markers came after the Mocs had fallen behind by double digits in the final 3 minutes, 32 seconds.
An early second-half spurt included eight points in a two-minute stretch, and he topped his previous career high of 29 points – scored last season against East Tennessee State, another rival – on a three-point play with 4:42 to play.
“He’s everything you want in a player,” McCall said. “He is wired the right way, he completely puts winning first. He completely puts his teammates first. You coach guys like him, Tuoyo, (Greg) Pryor, (Casey) Jones and everyone else, it’s a one-in-a-million-type thing as a coach.
“He (McLean) is one of the best players to ever come through this program.”
And it’s all because of a chip that will never leave.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.