The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team has secured another 20-win season
Still to be determined is the Mocs’ exact seed for next week’s Southern Conference tournament in Asheville, North Carolina — but it’s going to be much better than last year.
UTC locked up a top-three seed for the SoCon tourney Wednesday night, defeating Mercer 84-75 at McKenzie Arena to improve to 20-9 overall and 12-5 in the league.
Only one regular-season game remains for the Mocs, who will host Western Carolina (21-8, 10-7) at 2 p.m. Saturday at McKenzie. If they defeat the Catamounts and UNC Greensboro falls at East Tennessee State University, the Mocs will move into the No. 2 spot for the 10-team SoCon bracket. Otherwise, the Mocs will be the No. 3 seed, but it’s a massive jump from last year, when UTC was the No. 7 seed but advanced to the conference championship game in Dan Earl’s first season as coach.
It wasn’t the prettiest of performances Wednesday, but the Mocs executed offensively, making 20 of 25 attempts from 2-point range and improving to 13-2 this season when scoring at least 80 points.
The Bears (14-16, 7-10) entered the game as a potentially dangerous opponent despite their record, having swept UNCG and having beaten SoCon regular-season champion Samford as well as reigning league tournament champion Furman. The visitors caused UTC some problems with their physicality on defense and scored 23 second-chance points, but they never really threatened as the Mocs did a good job of keeping the Bears at bay.
Much like their first meeting this season — the Mocs won 74-60 on Jan. 17 in Macon, Georgia — UTC wasn’t able to get much going from 3-point range and was a combined 12-of-49 behind the arc in the two games against the Bears. However, the Mocs took advantage elsewhere, making 13 of 15 layup attempts.
Sam Alexis had a huge game for the home team with 13 points, a career-high 17 rebounds and a pair of blocked shots. Jan Zidek led the Mocs in scoring with 24 points off the bench, while Honor Huff continued his hot play with 21 and Trey Bonham added 10.
Mercer had three scorers in double figures: David Thomas led with 22 points and four assists, Jalyn McCreary added 11 with six rebounds, and Caleb Hunter chipped in 10 highlighted by a pair of 3-pointers.
The Mocs — who bounced back after a disappointing loss Saturday at The Citadel, which is close to the bottom of the league standings — played the game without freshman guard Myles Che, who was out with an upper-body injury.
“We don’t have a ton of guys at practice every day,” Earl said. “That was a hard one at Citadel, and we knew that it could happen, and we tried to prepare the guys and we just didn’t attack the game right on the whole, and then certainly played poorly down the stretch.
“I think tonight we played with confidence, we shared the ball, and we played tough throughout the whole game. But certainly down the stretch, I thought we were better.”
Earl’s victory continued a solid stretch for the Mocs, who have five 20-win seasons in the past 10 years under four head coaches: Will Wade (2014-15), Matt McCall (2015-16), Lamont Paris (2019-20 and 2021-22) and now Earl, who has 38 wins in his first two years in Chattanooga.
“I thought we competed throughout,” Earl said, praising the play of Alexis and sophomore Randy Brady. “I thought it was good that we missed some open shots, because we were sharing the ball and we were able to get a win.
“It was a hard-fought win, but I’m happy for these guys.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.