Correction
A previous version of this story mistakenly said that UTC’s women’s basketball team had played two teams coached by members of the USA Today Top 25 voting panel. The Mocs have played three such teams.
Any college basketball team that reaches the 20-win mark on Feb. 2 is doing pretty well, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women got there Monday with a 64-56 defeat of East Tennessee State that stretched their winning streak to 16 games.
UTC’s success culminated last week in the program’s first appearance in The Associated Press women’s Top 25 in more than 30 years, and this week the Mocs (20-3) moved up two spots to No. 23 in the writers’ poll.
UTC’s Ka’Vonne Towns (11) breaks between Furman’s Brittany Hodges (31) and Holli Wilkins during the Mocs’ SoCon game against the Furman Paladins on Saturday at McKenzie Arena in Chattanooga. UTC won, 67-45.However, while they earned 96 points in the latest AP poll, they’ve been all but absent from the USA Today Top 25 voted on by a selection of Division I coaches. They received four points in mid-December but otherwise received no votes until getting three points in this week’s poll released Tuesday.
So what gives? How can the AP have UTC as the 23rd best team in the country while the coaches’ poll barely acknowledges its existence?
UTC’s resume is solid with wins over then-No. 4 Tennessee and then-No. 7 Stanford. The three losses were to No. 4 Notre Dame, by two points to a solid South Florida team that now is 17-4 and in second place in the American Athletic Conference behind No. 2 Connecticut and an admittedly troubling Dec. 1 stumble at Arkansas State that UTC coach Jim Foster admits was badly timed, coming right after Thanksgiving and the Mocs’ upset of the Lady Vols.
“That was just poorly scheduled,” Foster said last week of the 57-52 road loss to the Red Wolves. “It was the last game we scheduled, and it was the only day we could do it. But it’s never a good idea to get in a bus and drive six hours the weekend before exams.”
UTC has played, and defeated, three teams with coaches who vote in the USA Today poll – ETSU’s Brittney Ezell, UT-Martin’s Kevin McMillan and South Dakota’s Amy Williams. Ezell was on the road recruiting Tuesday and unavailable for comment, and McMillan — whose Skyhawks lost 65-54 on their home court to the Mocs on Dec. 13 — said through his school’s sports information office that he would have no comment on the rankings or his votes until after the season.
So the mystery remains as to what the members of the USA Today coaching panel are looking for when casting their ballots, if they even know UTC exists.
Meanwhile, the Mocs keep piling up the wins knowing that regardless of the rankings, they will get their opponents’ best shot every time they take the court.
“We just want to keep going, keep being hungry, practicing hard and transferring it into the game,” senior Ka’Vonne Towns said before a recent UTC practice. “I think more teams are going to try and target us now.
“But as long as we keep playing how we’ve been playing, I think we’re going to keep being successful.”
Shumpert honored
UTC sophomore guard Chelsey Shumpert was named the SoCon women’s basketball player of the week after totaling 19 points and six assists with no turnovers in the win at Mercer and scoring 22 points against ETSU. She shot 57.7 percent for the two games, including 42.9 percent (6-for-14) from 3-point range.
Contact Jim Tanner at jtanner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6478. Follow him at twitter.com/JFTanner.