The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team has been forced to do its share of adjusting on the fly in Dan Earl’s second season as coach of the Mocs.
The first variation of the team was 6-3 prior to the mid-December addition of junior guard Trey Bonham, a two-time transfer from the Florida Gators who had to sit out the first nine games until a court ruling gave him — and multiple other NCAA basketball players — eligibility. So the Mocs adjusted, and players such as Myles Che and Jan Zidek had to shift their roles to help.
Fast-forward to Wednesday at McKenzie Arena, where the Mocs played their first game since Dec. 10 without Bonham, who is out with a lower-body injury incurred during Sunday’s game at Furman. Missing their second-leading scorer this season, the Mocs adjusted again to another lineup shift, and they used a huge second half to pull away from Wofford for an 81-65 victory to improve to 19-9 this season and 11-4 in the Southern Conference.
The Mocs remain in a tie for second in the league standings with UNC Greensboro, which defeated Western Carolina 71-65 on Wednesday. The Spartans (20-8, 11-4) hold a seeding advantage over UTC for now due to their sweep of Furman, which defeated the Mocs on Sunday to earn a split of the regular-season series.
First-place Samford (24-4, 13-2) held off an upset bid by Furman on Wednesday, going on a 7-0 run in the final 39 seconds to win 74-72, inching closer to the SoCon regular-season title with less than two weeks remaining.
In UTC’s win against Wofford (15-13, 8-7), the Mocs were led by 29 points from Honor Huff, with the 5-foot-10 sophomore guard continuing his hot streak. Huff has 86 points and has hit 17 3-pointers in his past three games, and he shot 11-for-19 from the field against the Terriers, including 5-for-11 from 3-point range.
He got help from Zidek, who finished with 15 points off the bench while making half of the six 3-pointers he attempted.
“Coming off the bench, I just try to give a boost to the second unit,” Zidek said. “Sometimes when other teams have their second unit in the game, they might have some little drops in their performance, but I try to be one of those guys who gives a boost to the second lineup, embrace my role and do what I do.”
The Mocs were up by just a point at halftime, 39-38, despite holding the Terriers to 38% shooting from the field, but the hosts quickly fixed that with a 10-0 run to build a double-digit lead. The Terriers did respond to cut it to four, but the Mocs had a 12-2 spurt to stretch the advantage back out.
“In the first half, I thought they were more physical and moving faster than us,” said Earl, who noted his team had a “spirited conversation” at halftime. “We got on the guys a little bit and told them if they wanted to win the game, they were going to have to play much harder on both sides of the ball, so I was very pleased with our effort coming out of half with that kind of tempo.
“That gave us a little breathing room, and then we finished it off.”
Che, Sam Alexis and Tyler Millin had eight points each, with Alexis grabbing a team-high nine rebounds and blocking a pair of shots. Huff added five assists for UTC, which was 13-for-14 on free throws.
Wofford was led by 21 points from Corey Tripp, who was 6-for-10 from 3-point range, and 10 each from Dillon Bailey and Kyler Filewich, whose six rebounds and five assists were team highs for the Terriers.
The Mocs are down to their final three regular-season games. They’ll visit The Citadel at 1 p.m. Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina, before wrapping up the schedule with back-to-back home games against Mercer next Wednesday and Western Carolina on March 2 ahead of the league tournament in Asheville, North Carolina.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.