Rusty Wright comes across as a pretty plain-as-day person.
An everyday man, some would say.
He speaks in a way that is largely beloved by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga contingent, because it’s all very black and white to him.
You play football. It’s a game. There’s a winner, there’s a loser.
Of course UTC’s fifth-year head coach wants to win — what competitor doesn’t? — but he wants his team to grow as well. Sometimes his Mocs will do everything the right way, but it won’t lead to the winning result. Sometimes his Mocs have played badly and have won anyway. Sure, it’s a win, but the process wasn’t right.
Wright and his staff’s approach to recruiting has been simple: Find players who have a chip on their shoulders for one reason or another — undersized, underrecruited, perhaps underappreciated and underutilized at a previous stop — and do their collective best to get those guys galvanized to play together 11 times a year.
This year, it has led to a Football Championship Subdivision playoff berth, UTC’s first since 2016, and the program’s first postseason victory since reaching the second round that year. UTC improved to 8-4 this season with last weekend’s win 24-21 at Austin Peay, where the Mocs were listed as underdogs by oddsmakers and considered the same by outside observers.
“I just happened to look on Twitter and see all the FCS websites, and not a single one thought we’d win,” Wright said this week.
UTC is again an underdog, by 6.5 points, going into its second-round game against seventh-seeded Furman (9-2) at 1 p.m. Saturday in Greenville, South Carolina.
That’s not surprising considering there were some who questioned whether UTC even belonged in the 24-team field to begin with. But after starting the season outside of the top 25, winning their way into the national rankings a few weeks into their schedule and never leaving, the Mocs have been galvanized by a mentality that could be summed up like this: “Y’all don’t want us around.”
“I love it personally. It’s a big reason why I came here,” said Alex Mitchelll, a sophomore linebacker from Murfreesboro who was an all-state player at Riverdale High School and received Southern Conference All-Freshman recognition at UTC in 2022 — but did not receive any All-SoCon honors this year, although he leads the Mocs with 74 total tackles.
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / UTC linebacker Alex Mitchell blitzes as Western Carolina’s Cole Gonzales passed during a SoCon game on Oct. 7 at Finley Stadium.“I felt like I had something to prove myself,” Mitchell added. “I feel like I’ve been underrated throughout the season. It gives us motivation every week, with people stepping up, stepping in and doing their jobs and becoming successful.”
To further the narrative, the Mocs enter Saturday’s game against the Paladins — who won the regular-season meeting 17-14 on Nov. 4 in Chattanooga to clinch the SoCon’s automatic playoff berth — without the players who started in the season opener at quarterback (Chase Artopoeus), running back (Ailym Ford) and kicker (Jude Kelley).
That was already the case heading to Austin Peay, but in the first half of the game against the Governors, two-time SoCon defensive player of the year Jay Person joined the list of key UTC players sidelined by injury. Although he traveled with the team to Greenville on Friday, he did not practice this week and his status for the game is unknown.
But much like Luke Schomburg has stepped in for Artopoeus, Gino Appleberry and Reggie Davis have done the same for Ford and Clayton Crile replaced Kelley — even kicking the winning field goal last week — someone will take the place of Person if need be.
And more than likely, that player will produce in an opportunity he waited a long time for.
“We weren’t born on third base,” Wright said. “We’re all standing in the batter’s box, but that’s the thing, what do we have to lose? Nobody expects us to win, nobody that picks these things thought we’d beat Austin Peay. I knew our kids would go play hard, they do what they were supposed to do, and at the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to. You’ve got to go play, and I think we’ve got enough guys that just are good football players, good people. They’re going to give you everything they have, and if it’s good enough, it’s good enough.
“If it’s not, we’ll go figure it out to see how we can do better, and that’s what we do.”
Plain as day.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.