The last three trips to the Southern Conference men’s basketball tournament haven’t treated University of Tennessee at Chattanooga seniors Martynas Bareika, Lance Stokes and Ronrico White kindly. They are still looking for their first tournament win and hope that changes today.
The Mocs (22-9) play The Citadel or Furman tonight in the quarterfinals at the U.S. Cellular Center in Asheville, N.C. A win tonight would be the program’s first SoCon tourney victory since defeating Georgia Southern 82-62 on March 5, 2010.
Last season’s UTC team — coach Will Wade’s first — lost 62-55 to Georgia Southern in the quarterfinals. But this year’s team is different. Very different.
“We’re a lot better,” Wade said early this week. “We haven’t said anything about last year and won’t. Last year’s team was smoke-and-mirrors; this year’s team has a top-100 RPI, which is good for a team at our level. We haven’t discussed it at all and won’t.”
Despite the fact the Mocs finished second in the conference regular season in both seasons under Wade, there’s a different feeling about this one. So while last season the finish was very nice, this year’s team is expected to compete for the title. Some have predicted these Mocs will be cutting the nets down after Monday’s championship game, although preseason favorite and top-seeded Wofford is the clear favorite.
So while there might be pressure on the Mocs, that’s a good thing according to Wade.
“I want us to be aggressive and confident, but we should be confident,” he said. “I tell the guys that pressure is a privilege; I’d rather be going in with high expectations than not. I’m confident in this group; if we go in with clear heads, we’ll be just fine.”
White has averaged 11.3 points in three career SoCon tournament games, making 38 percent of his 3-point attempts. He himself has had to transform in terms of his thoughts and expectations going into these games — going from the guys wanting to “win for the seniors” to one of the seniors his teammates want to win for.
The SoCon championship also means advancing to the NCAA tournament. The process of reaching that goal will start this evening.
“Last year it was Z (Zaccheus Mason). The year before that it was ‘Tay’ (Dontay Hampton) and Drazen (Zlovaric), then Omar and those guys the year before that,” White said. “Now I have Casey (Jones) telling me that he wants to win for me. It would mean the world to me; we’re close.”
Jones said that, to realize those goals, the team will “just need everybody to step up and play as hard as they can.”
“I’m not going in the tournament expecting to have the best games of my life, but I know I’m going to play the hardest I’ve ever played for Rico, Lance and Marty,” the all-conference forward said. “That’s all we really need, for everybody to play the hardest they can.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.