ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Sitting at the podium Saturday night, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball coach Will Wade tried to put into words his immediate thoughts after the Mocs’ 69-67 loss to Furman in the Southern Conference tournament quarterfinals.
But he couldn’t.
“It hurts. I don’t know how to put it in perspective,” the second-year coach said. “It’s unbelievably tough. I’m usually pretty good in the locker room, but I had no idea what to say to them.
“There’s nothing I can say to make it feel better for any of us.”
Wade was visibly shaken through the eight-minute interview, repeating terms such as “it hurts” and “devastating” throughout. He, along with senior Ronrico White and junior Casey Jones, spoke quietly. Each word seemed harder, more painful to form than the previous.
This just wasn’t supposed to happen. Not this year. Not to this team.
After the program’s fifth consecutive first-game loss in a SoCon tournament, there was pain and there were tears. White sat on the bench immediately afterward, staring down at the floor. Jones kneeled beside him, also with his head down.
White played like a man who wasn’t ready for his season to end, with 11 points in the final 39.2 seconds, including two 3-pointers — one of which he banked in.
“It means a lot to me to not be able to come through for him down the stretch,” said Jones, who scored 12 points. “It’s tough, because I know he didn’t want to go home today.”
This season’s pain was different. The Mocs entered the four-day event as one of the favorites to win the tournament. Instead, they found themselves on the end of a Furman buzzsaw, as the 10th-seeded Paladins made 11 of 12 free throws in the final minute to claim the two-point win.
“I thought we were going to win the thing,” Wade said, referring to the tournament. “Honestly, I knew we weren’t good enough to win it last year, but this year we were good enough to win. It just kills you as a coach; we’ve got to live with it the rest of the year.
“I feel awful. … I feel like I let them down. As a coach, you want to be comforting and help your guys out; I feel like I let them down. I love this team; I’m sorry we couldn’t keep it going. I thought we were good enough to win. I thought we were good enough to be competitive if we made it to the Dance, but that’s not on the table for us now.”
For the time being, the program is left to lick its wounds and think about what could have been. The Mocs have won 22 games, including quality wins over Robert Morris, Coastal Carolina and Wofford — all of whom are playing in their respective conference championship games. It’s not likely that will be good enough for a bid to the National Invitation Tournament, with the more likely scenario being the Mocs choosing to participate in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament or the College Basketball Invitational.
That decision won’t be made for a while, though. The immediate aftermath of Saturday’s defeat was not that time.
“The fact is that we haven’t won here,” Wade said. “We’ve had two pretty good years — we’ve been the No. 2 seed twice — but we’ve got to look at everything, figure out how to come here and get wins. The regular season is great, it’s awesome, but we have to position ourselves to come here, play extremely well and be able to advance, but we’ll figure that out and get back to working on that.
“For right now, we’ll head back and figure things out from there. I just love our guys, and right now I’m heartbroken for them.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.