It isn’t too often that University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball coach Wes Moore has to tell a player to shoot more. But that’s what he wants Kylie Lambert to do.
“I’ve been begging her,” Moore said. “I wish my coach would have begged me to shoot sometimes. I try to explain to her that everybody has certain things they can do to help this team get better, and hers should be the most fun.”
The struggling Lady Mocs need to find an offensive spark as they head into the second half of their Southern Conference schedule. UTC (8-11, 5-5), which has lost three of its last four games, hosts Western Carolina (6-11, 4-4) tonight at McKenzie Arena.
Lambert, a 5-foot-11 sophomore wing from Etowah and McMinn Central High School, is fourth on the team in scoring at 7.7 points per game. She averages just under six shots a game, with 45 of her 112 field-goal attempts coming from 3-point range.
Her overall field-goal accuracy of 41.1 percent is second best on the team, as is her 3-point rate (35.6 percent). She’s also second on the team in rebounds with 6.1 per game.
“In high school I had Coach [Johnny] Morgan constantly telling me to score, to shoot every chance I get. And Coach Moore is trying to get me to shoot a lot more, too,” Lambert said. “I need to get the mindset of being a scorer.”
Lambert has shown flashes of being that scorer. She hit four 3s and scored a career-high 21 points against Cal State Northridge earlier this season, and she’s scored at least 11 points in four of her last seven games.
However, she’s also had eight games in which she has attempted five shots or fewer.
“It needs to be every game,” she said of having a scorer’s mentality. “It’s just kind of streaky right now.”
Lambert came to UTC last season expecting to play the wing but wound up as the backup point guard after Tagan Hatchett suffered a season-ending knee injury.
Even though she’s no longer a point guard, Lambert sometimes reverts to the role of the distributor. She’s third on the team with 2.4 assists per game.
“There’s times when we’ll kick it out to her and she’ll be kind of relaxed, flat-footed and looking to hit the post instead of thinking shot,” Moore said. “I just think she needs to look for it more.”
Contact John Frierson at jfrierson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6268.
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