KNOXVILLE — One year after a senior-laden University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team fell short in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, a younger group of Mocs hopes to advance to the round of 32 and perhaps beyond.
UTC (29-3) will begin that quest today with an 11 a.m. game against Pittsburgh at Thompson-Boling Arena. Tennessee will take on Boise State at 1:30 p.m.
This season’s UTC team has achieved more than any other in the program’s impressive history, with wins over Tennessee’s Lady Vols and Stanford, a No. 17 ranking in The Associated Press women’s Top 25, a No. 7 seed in the tournament and an ongoing 25-game winning streak.
All those accomplishments are great for the team’s confidence, but only more wins can keep the amazing season going.
“I think it gives us a little bit more confidence than if we weren’t winning a lot of games coming into the tournament,” junior guard Alicia “Red” Payne said before practice Friday. “But still this is like a brand-new season for us.
UTC coach Jim Foster and Alicia Payne talk during the second round of the SoCon tournament Friday, March 6, 2015. The Mocs beat Furman 68-55.Foster familiarity
Pittsburgh coach Suzie McConnell-Serio and UTC coach Jim Foster have known each other for almost 30 years, since McConnell’s freshman year at Penn State when the Nittany Lions played the Foster-coached St. Joseph’s team every season. She later played for Foster on Team USA in the 1992 Olympics. But if you ask her about his greatest qualities, it has little to do with what Foster has accomplished on the court. “He’s so genuine as a person, and I think that’s what I take away from having played for him when he was an assistant on the Olympic team,” she said. “The X’s and O’s and knowledge of the game is off the charts. I mean he’s brilliant as a coach, but what stands out to me is more as a person. “I think he’s more like a father figure to the players that he coaches.” Despite her fond feelings for the Mocs’ coach, McConnell-Serio knows Foster’s team will present a tough challenge for her Panthers, requiring a concerted effort if Pitt is to advance to the second round. “(UTC) is very deliberate; they’re very patient, they run their sets. They execute on ball screens very, very well. (Foster) does a great job of putting his players in a position to play to their strengths, and we have to find ways to disrupt that so that we can create off of our defense. “We’ll need to execute, because they run the shot clock down when they have the ball, and they try to force you take a lot of time on the offensive end.” — Jim Tanner
“We don’t take into consideration that much what we did, because that’s in the past, and we have to start winning games now.”
The next game is against a young Pittsburgh team that was picked to finish last in the Atlantic Coast Conference but overachieved with a starting lineup that includes three freshmen, senior guard Brianna Kiesel and graduate student Monica Wignot, a four-year Panthers volleyball player who is using her final year of eligibility to help coach Suzie McConnell-Serio’s team.
“She was a great player, and she’s a very good coach,” UTC coach Jim Foster said of McConnell-Serio. “She figures out what they need to do well, and they do it well. She’s only in her second year and she has a bunch of freshmen, and she actually has a volleyball player that she convinced to play basketball with her fifth year of eligibility.
“She has melded them into a hard-nosed basketball team.”
While relatively young, the Mocs will enter today’s game as the more experienced team and with vastly more NCAA tourney experience than Pitt (19-11), which hasn’t been in the tourney since 2009. That experience plus UTC’s big wins this season could be the difference in a win and a loss.
“I think it definitely gives us some confidence just knowing that we can come out and compete with any team, and if we compete well enough we can win,” senior Ka’Vonne Towns said. “I think that gives us some confidence going into tomorrow.
“The people that are here this year are just more experienced. The freshmen from last year were kind of nervous (in last year’s 59-53 tourney loss to Syracuse), so I think this year we are just more experienced and ready.”
Foster agreed that scheduling tough opponents has paid off for his team, and several underclassmen have played key roles.
“I think we played a very aggressive schedule, and it’ll be even more aggressive next year,” he said. “I think in my opinion that’s how you prepare a team to have an opportunity to have success. You don’t hide your weaknesses from yourself. You expose them, and then you work very hard to make them strengths.”
For 10th-seeded Pitt, the primary weapon is Kiesel. The senior and first-team All-ACC point guard averages 18.2 points, five rebounds and 4.6 assists per game, and controlling her will be a big part of the Mocs’ game plan.
“She’s a really good player, and if I do guard her I’ll just hope to make her take tough shots and make it hard for her to do anything,” Payne said. “It’s a challenge for me, and I like the challenge to be able to guard one of their better players.”
Keisel also knows the challenge that the Mocs present despite coming from a less-heralded conference.
“I think Chattanooga is a very good team, and they play really well together,” she said. “They play a low-possession game, so we’ve got to try to play our game and speed them up a little bit. I think that’s going to be our biggest challenge.
“We just have to go out there and execute our game plan.”
For both teams, the chance to play in the NCAA tournament and get a shot to advance is a special moment, one to be cherished even as they prepare for the biggest game of the season this morning.
“Everything is magnified when you get to the NCAA tournament,” McConnell-Serio said. “We usually travel on a 30-seat charter, but now we’re on a chartered Southwest flight with the band and cheerleaders and additional administrators.
“So you know immediately that this is bigger than the regular season, and it’s more special for each and every one of us. It’s the NCAA tournament, and there’s nothing better. It’s what you play all year for.”
Contact Jim Tanner at jtanner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6478. Follow him at twitter.com/JFTanner.