UTC Mocs logoThe University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team woke up this morning in second place in the Southern Conference, a game ahead of Mercer in the standings and a game behind Wofford.
Behind those three is a muddled mess.
The Mocs (15-8, 8-2) embark on their first weekend of road games in conference play, which starts tonight in Greenville, S.C., against Furman (7-14, 4-6) and ends on Saturday at Western Carolina (11-12, 6-5). The Catamounts currently sit in a tie for fourth with East Tennessee State, while Furman is alone in sixth place. The Paladins do own a win over ETSU, while the Catamounts have won eight of their last 11 games, so the Mocs will have to be sharp to come out with a pair of wins.
“This (second place) is where we want to be at,” center Justin Tuoyo said. “It could be worse; we could be playing to get a bye. We’re just playing to maintain where we’re at. Hopefully Wofford will slip up, but we get a chance to play them again.”
The Mocs will travel to Wofford a week from today.
Although Wofford, UTC and Mercer are in the upper echelon, there are dangerous teams lurking below them. Western Carolina has a win over Mercer, while the Terriers’ lone loss was at The Citadel (3-7 in conference play). After losing their first eight conference games, Samford has won three consecutive to leap ahead of UNC Greensboro, who, like Furman, owns a win over ETSU.
“There’s not a huge gap this season,” Western Carolina coach Larry Hunter said Tuesday. “The league is better than I think some anticipated. There are a lot of solid teams, and we’ll play a lot of good teams these next several weeks.”
On that list this weekend will be the Mocs.
White nearing 1,000
UTC senior guard Ronrico White enters tonight’s game 10 points shy of 1,000 points for his career. The 6-foot-3 White has averaged 10.7 points per game on the season.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.