Staff photo by Tim Barber/Chattanooga Times Free Press – Dec 11 2010 – Chattanooga’s Tenisha Townsend, left, cuts off the drive of Kentucky’s Jennifer O’Neill in first-half action at McKenzie Arena in Chattanooga on Saturday.For a long stretch in the second half Saturday, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team played as well as it has all season and went toe-to-toe with 14th-ranked Kentucky.
The Lady Mocs even led twice, briefly, before the Victoria Dunlap-led Wildcats shattered any thoughts of an upset. Dunlap scored 11 points in a 30-9 Kentucky run to pull away for a 79-64 win at McKenzie Arena.
“UTC definitely gave us a great run,” said Dunlap, who finished with game highs of 26 points and nine rebounds.
Whitney Hood led UTC (3-5) with 19 points and eight rebounds and Kayla Christopher added 14 points, including a pair of go-ahead 3-pointers.
After trailing 36-28 at the half, UTC hit its first six shots of the second half. A Christopher 3-pointer gave the Lady Mocs their first lead, 42-41, but Dunlap answered with a layup that put Kentucky (7-1) back in front.
A Christopher 3 from the right wing put UTC up 45-43 with 15:35 remaining, but the Lady Mocs’ second and final lead lasted 61 seconds. Dunlap answered again, this time with a three-point play that gave the Wildcats the lead for good.
“I was really excited, personally, and I thought that would get us going,” UTC’s Kylie Lambert said of the Lady Mocs’ lead, “but somewhere in between there we fell.”
Lambert had a career-high six assists.
The Lady Mocs had no answers from the 14:34 mark when Dunlap converted the three-point play to a Kentucky layup with 5:37 left that gave the Wildcats a 73-54 lead.
Lady Mocs coach Wes Moore said his team didn’t handle Kentucky’s pressure well at times. The Wildcats trap and go after the ball as aggressively as anyone UTC will face all season, which led to 16 UTC turnovers.
Kentucky’s defense on inbounds plays also resulted in four 5-second calls.
“We just didn’t handle [the pressure] well,” Moore said. “We’ve got to learn to work a little bit harder to get open, help each other get open and Kentucky will definitely expose you if you have problems going those things.”
Wildcats senior Carly Morrow, a former GPS standout from Lookout Mountain, Ga., was quietly efficient. She finished with four assists and also had her first blocked shot of the season.
“I thought this was one of her better games of the season and she didn’t score a point,” Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell said.
While sitting in her hotel room Saturday, it didn’t really feel like she was home, Morrow said. But it was different once she was in the Roundhouse.
“It was cool,” she said of her first game at McKenzie. “Well, not when we were getting shot out of the gym and it was getting really loud. That wasn’t really fun. But for the most part it was cool.”
The Lady Mocs will resume Southern Conference play on Thursday at the College of Charleston.
Contact John Frierson at jfrierson@timesfreepress.com or (423) 757-6268. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mocsbeatCTFP.