UTC men’s basketball coach Will Wade directs players in this Jan. 24, 2015, photo.Getting the Southern Conference’s top seed could eventually become a priority for Will Wade and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team.
This week won’t be that time, though.
The Mocs (16-9, 9-3) currently sit in a second-place tie with Mercer in the race for the top seed in the upcoming conference tournament in Asheville, N.C., which starts three weeks from Friday. Both teams sit two games behind Wofford (20-5, 11-1) in the conference with six games left to play, and UTC will get an opportunity to cut that lead in half when the teams play tonight in Benjamin Johnson Arena in Spartanburg, S.C. Tipoff is at 7.
If the Mocs are able to beat Wofford tonight, they’ll still need to win the rest of their games. They’ll also need the Terriers to lose another conference game to create a tie at the top of the standings.
“We had a great opportunity before last Saturday to do things on our own to get the (regular-season) championship, but now we’re depending on another team,” junior Casey Jones said. “We had it in our hands, but now we just have to get together and get our minds right.”
Should the Mocs earn the conference’s top seed — which while a tall task, is feasible — their road to through the tournament would be begin at noon on Mar. 7 against the winner of a first-round game between the No. 8 and No. 9 seed. If those seeds were to hold, they wouldn’t have to face either Wofford or Mercer until the championship game, but they could potentially see Western Carolina, who gave the Mocs their third conference loss this past Saturday.
If they are unable to overtake Wofford in the conference race, and finished No. 2, they would play the winner of a first-round game between the No. 7 and No. 10 seed on Mar. 7 at 6.
Seedings weren’t too big of a priority for Wade as he sat on the bus Wednesday afternoon.
“You wanna be seeded as high as you can (in the conference tournament), but of more importance to me is us playing better,” Wade said. “No matter the result against Wofford, we need to play better. We have to pay attention to more of the details, have a great spirit and respond to adversity.
“If we do those things better, the conference seedings will take care of themselves.”
In each of the team’s three losses in conference play — at home against Wofford and on the road at Mercer and Western Carolina — the Mocs had a chance to either take the lead or win the game in the final minute. That bodes well, considering the team is still yet to put together a complete game. There have been games that they’ve taken big leads but had to hold on for wins. There were games that they were down a lot out of the gate but clawed back to have chances to win.
That fact at times has been frustrating for Wade, though. Citing a “lack of toughness,” he put the team through a hard practice Monday, which is normally the team’s day off. They had another difficult practice Tuesday before leaving for Spartanburg, S.C., on Wednesday.
“It was fun,” Jones said. “We hadn’t practiced like that in a while. We’re trying to get our toughness back, and in our practices, you won’t survive if you don’t play tough. You’ll be down there getting dunked on by Duke (Ethridge) and (Justin) Tuoyo. We haven’t been playing our best basketball, but we just need everybody to come together and get on the same page.”
Being a talented team, Jones admitted Monday that it’s possible the team might have taken that for granted at times, which has led to the slow starts.
“I think deep down inside, that may be it,” he said. “What it comes down to is that we’re not ready to play when we come out before the game, but we’re going to get better.
“It’s up from here.”
That trek towards the top of the conference standings begins tonight.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.