Without any games on its schedule this week, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team has had a chance to work on its defense.
The Lady Mocs rank near the bottom not only in the Southern Conference but among all NCAA Division I teams in several categories, including the biggies: scoring defense, field-goal-percentage defense and 3-point-percentage defense.
“You look at the numbers and we’re one of the worst teams in the league, and we’ve got to change that,” UTC coach Wes Moore said. “The reason we’ve had success in the past is that on a bad shooting night we’d play defense well enough — not to say that by any means we were the best [defensive] team — but we played defense well enough and rebounded well enough to win.
“This year we don’t do that.”
The Lady Mocs (9-11, 6-5) are allowing 70.2 points per game, which as of Thursday ranked 297th out of 333 D-I teams. Opponents are shooting 44.2 percent from the field against UTC, which ranks 323rd, and UTC’s 3-point defense is 312th, with opponents hitting 36 percent of their 3s.
Point guard Tenisha Townsend said the Lady Mocs’ break from games came at the right time. UTC beat Western Carolina last Saturday and doesn’t play again until the College of Charleston visits on Monday.
Townsend said the key to the Lady Mocs improving their defense is playing as a team.
“It’s like once one person’s beat, our whole defense breaks down, and we just need to learn how to help each other out and rotate and make plays,” she said, adding that UTC needs to do a better job communicating on defense as well.
The Lady Mocs are giving up too many easy drives to the basket, Moore said, calling it “Olé” defense. Fixing that, he said, requires playing defense with more energy and more focus on fundamentals.
“[It means] jumping to the ball when it’s moving, being willing to rotate in front of somebody with the body instead of just the ‘Olé’ reach,” he said. “Things that we take for granted sometimes, especially young players, but it’s not just them. Our veterans still have not totally bought into the team-defense concept.”
Moore also said that perhaps his players “are too nice” and don’t play with the toughness needed “to stick our nose in there and battle” on a regular basis.
The Lady Mocs, winners of 11 straight SoCon regular-season titles, are tied with UNC Greensboro for fourth place in the standings with nine games remaining. Appalachian State leads the league with a 9-2 record.
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