Shawn Poppie knew exactly what his second University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team was going to have to do to be successful offensively.
It was going to take a lot of graduate transfer guard Jada Guinn, a lot of sophomore forward Raven Thompson and the right mix of contributions from the rest of the roster for the reigning Southern Conference tournament champions. It wasn’t always going to be the same person supplementing the Guinn and Thompson attack, but there needed to be players who could step up in the necessary moments.
Defensively? You pretty much knew what you were going to get.
The formula that has worked so well for so much of the season did so again Saturday afternoon at McKenzie Arena, with the Mocs improving to 14-3 overall and 2-0 in SoCon play with a pretty dominating 75-52 win over Samford.
The Mocs got the usual contributions from Guinn (24 points, six rebounds, three steals) and Thompson (20 points, six rebounds, three assists, two steals), and this time it was junior forward Karsen Murphy’s turn to be the third scorer as the 6-footer knocked down three 3-pointers and finished with 13 points.