Despite any perceived struggles for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team this season, one question that could never be asked has been about the Mocs’ effort.
That was again the case Saturday, when UTC faced Furman in Greenville, South Carolina. Shots were missed by the Mocs — lots of them; 43 to be exact — but their effort never wavered. Eventually, a few shots were made and UTC got the result it was searching for, defeating the Paladins 51-44 in double overtime.
The Mocs shot just less than 30% from the field, going 18-for-61, but limited the Paladins to 28% shooting — with the lapse in offense leading first-year UTC coach Shawn Poppie to joke on the postgame radio broadcast that “we set the game back a little bit there.”
Freshman forward Raven Thompson led UTC in scoring with 13 points, including a three-point play in the first minute of the second overtime that gave the Mocs (11-9, 4-3 Southern Conference) the lead for good. Addie Porter and Yazz Wazeerud-Din scored 11 each, with Porter, a 5-foot-4 sophomore, netting the first double-double of her Mocs career by adding a career-high 20 rebounds.
It’s the first 20-rebound game for a player in the program since current UTC assistant Jasmine Joyner had that many against Furman on Jan. 9, 2016. Joyner also had 20 rebounds against the Paladins in the 2015 SoCon tournament.