Players slowly exited the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football locker room Saturday evening at Finley Stadium, dejection and disappointment written all over their faces.
The Mocs began the day in control of their postseason destiny, with a seed and a bye in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs likely if they won their final home game of the regular season. But after their 36-28 Southern Conference loss to Wofford, not only is the seed a likely no-go, simply making the playoffs is now uncertain.
UTC had been slotted as the No. 7 seed in the two playoff projections, a ranking that will assuredly fall. The Mocs (8-2, 6-2 SoCon) close the regular season at the Football Bowl Subdivision’s No. 1-ranked Alabama at 7 p.m. this Saturday. Besides Wofford, the Mocs other defeat was a 22-14 loss on Oct. 15 at The Citadel, which is 10-0 and completed an 8-0 SoCon season over the weekend.
Now UTC’s destiny is in the FCS selection committee’s hands.
“You never want your fate to be decided by someone else,” defensive end Keionta Davis said Saturday night. “You always want to leave it up to your team, and we had it but couldn’t keep on to it. Hopefully they’ll see we’ve (lost to) two really good teams and keep us in. That’s all we can hope for right now.
“We just have to keep playing. There’s nothing much to do now but just play and watch, and we’ll see “
The playoff selection show is next Sunday.
After the game, UTC coach Russ Huesman did his best impression of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick when asked about his team’s playoff chances, saying “We’re playing Alabama next week.”
“We’ll figure it out from there,” he said. “Whatever they decide, they decide. I think we deserve to be in there, but we’ll see what happens. We’re fixing to play Alabama. That’s all that matters right now.”
The Mocs are in a precarious spot when it comes to their résumé for the playoffs – as are Samford and Wofford, two other teams with two SoCon losses. All three have nonleague wins over FCS teams and are 1-1 against the other two in the trio, with the Mocs defeating Samford 41-21 on Sept. 24 and Samford beating Wofford 28-26 on Oct. 1.
“We’ll just prepare like we always do,” UTC receiver C.J. Board said. “We’ve been in this situation where we were kind of iffy about the playoffs. We didn’t get the seed but we got in, so that’s nothing new to us.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.