UTC Mocs logoAttack. Attack. Attack.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team attacked the paint Saturday against Samford. The Mocs also attacked the backboards, and they attacked on defense.
The Mocs followed up the best win of the Will Wade era with a solid 79-72 win over the Bulldogs in front of 3,807 fans at McKenzie Arena.
UTC (18-9, 11-3) tied last season’s win total and has two home games next week — against third-place Mercer on Thursday and East Tennessee State on Saturday.
Casey Jones and Eric Robertson led the Mocs on Saturday with 21 points each, Jones adding 10 rebounds, a season-high six assists and three blocked shots. Robertson was 5-for-8 from 3-point range and also blocked three shots, and Justin Tuoyo chipped in 14 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks of his own.
The Mocs shot 54 percent from the field and grabbed 16 offensive rebounds. They handled the Samford pressure by turning the ball over only four times in the final 20 minutes after 10 in the first half, while limiting the Bulldogs to 39 percent shooting in the second half — a number that was aided by some easy, uncontested layups at the end with the game already in hand.
“We were much better on defense in the second half,” Wade said. “We didn’t turn the ball over as much, so we didn’t put our defense in tough situations like we did in the first half.
“We were also a little more patient on offense in the second half, which helped our defense out, too.”
Samford (12-16, 5-10) was led by Evan Taylor’s 21 points and seven rebounds. Tyler Hood had 16 points while Darius Jones-Gibson added 13. Tyner graduate Michael Bradley battled foul trouble throughout, finishing with six points and two rebounds in 15 minutes of play.
“I thought Chattanooga did a great job of attacking the glass,” Samford coach Scott Padgett said. “We had a pretty good first half, but their offensive rebounds, second-chance points and second opportunities kept us from getting two points, four points away. We couldn’t get a real run because when we got a miss, we couldn’t get a rebound and get into transition.”
The Mocs blocked 10 shots as a team.
“Their length really hurt us,” Padgett said. “They’re basically three inches taller at every spot of the guards.”
The teams were tied at 32 at halftime. UTC didn’t help itself, shooting 3-for-10 at the free-throw line to go along with the 10 turnovers. There were two ties early in the second half — the last on a layup by Bradley with 16:42 to go, knotting the score at 39 — before the Mocs started to slowly pull away.
They built a six-point lead, then had a 9-2 run to stretch that advantage to 60-51 with 8:45 remaining. The margin reached 12 with 3:14 to go.
After the bad shooting from the foul line in the first half, the Mocs were 16-for-22 at the charity stripe in the second half.
“Coach Wes (Long) was really upset with us,” Jones said. “He helps us on our free throws every day. He’s the shooting guru, as Tre (McLean) would say. He helps us with our free throws. … We practice it every day and we shoot 3-for-10. We owed it to him to come out and shoot better, and we did.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.