UTC coach Will Wade talks to Ronrico White during a recent game. White played all of Thursday’s victory at point guard.Ronrico White sprawled out in one of the East Tennessee State University visitor chairs Saturday afternoon, with his mother rubbing his back. Casey Jones sat in another chair, also worn out from having played 80-plus minutes of intense basketball in the previous 72 hours.
Two other University of Tennessee at Chattanooga players — Greg Pryor and Lance Stokes — walked around on crutches, having sat out that day’s game.
With another three days before their next game, the Mocs’ break is needed.
In wins against Southern Conference opponents Western Carolina and ETSU, White played every minute — all 85 — at the point guard position. He averaged 13.5 points and five assists, while committing only three turnovers in the two games.
Jones matched White’s Thursday-Saturday point total, while adding 24 rebounds. Although Saturday wasn’t his best offensive performance, he had a huge offensive rebound before his 25-foot 3-pointer with 1.7 seconds on the clock that was the difference in the Mocs’ 74-71 win over the Buccaneers.
Jones joked that White definitely was going to need some rest, because “those senior legs don’t have too many more miles on them.” But he admitted the time away from games — after having played four conference games in eight days — was needed.
“Even though it’s not a break from practice, we need the time to re-energize ourselves and get ready to get back out there, so this is a good rest time for us,” he said.
White, who had his No. 1 jersey retired at Bearden High School in Knoxville on Friday, laughed when told of Jones’ comments about his “senior legs” (“He might be right,” White said) but he agreed that the time off came at the right time.
“We’ve been going at it pretty hard, so it feels good to get a rest, especially off a win like this,” he said. “We’re going to enjoy it, but we still have work to do.”
Coach Will Wade gave the team a couple of days off, to get his players’ legs back under them before they play at Samford on Thursday. White won’t be needed to play 40 (or 45) minutes, because Pryor should be back from his injury. Wade said Monday that Stokes will be more “day-to-day” after an ankle injury against Western Carolina.
“We need the rest,” Wade said Saturday. “We didn’t talk anything about the four games in eight days, because we’re not a program built on excuses. If we were, we probably wouldn’t have won today, because we could have piled up plenty of them.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.