Alicia Payne has played in the NCAA tournament three times. In each case, the experience lasted only one game.
She hopes that streak will end today.
Payne and her University of Tennessee at Chattanooga teammates face Mississippi State in the first round of the NCAA tournament’s Bridgeport Regional in Starkville, Miss., with the 2:30 p.m. EDT game on ESPN2 and 96.1 FM. The Bulldogs (26-7) are seeded fifth, with the Mocs (24-7) seeded 12th as the Southern Conference champions make their fourth straight appearance in the bracket.
“We’re going to have to come out with a lot of energy and play hard and disciplined on offense and defense,” said Payne, a guard, standout defender and the lone senior on UTC’s roster. “I believe we can get past the first round, and if we play our game, there’s a good chance we can do that.”
The winner of today’s game will face either fourth-seeded Michigan State (24-8) or No. 13 seed Belmont (24-8) in the second round Sunday in Starkville. The Spartans and Bruins play at noon today in Starkville.
The Mocs can be confident they’ve tested themselves against good competition this season. Of the 31 teams UTC has faced, 10 are playing in either the NCAA or the NIT tournament, and an 11th is playing in the Women’s Basketball Invitational, so the Mocs shouldn’t be intimidated by the opposition or the environment at Mississippi State.
And UTC has already faced the team heavily favored to win the bracket, losing 79-31 to Connecticut in Chattanooga early in the season.
“That’s why we schedule the way we schedule,” UTC head coach Jim Foster said. “We want to get in the tournament, but we want to win in the tournament. We know we’ve been on the floor with the best team in the tournament we know we’ve been on the floor against a lot of good basketball teams.”
The Mocs went 7-6 in 13 games against teams playing in national postseason tournaments, so they found ways to succeed against highly competitive opponents. Most of those games were during the nonconference schedule in the first half of the season, and Foster said Tuesday that his team in its current state would beat the one from earlier in the season “significantly.”
An 11-game winning streak for the “current” Mocs backs up Foster’s assessment.
“It comes to a point when you walk on the floor and you think you’re a pretty good basketball team and you think you’re a pretty good player,” Foster said. “Then you want to act cohesively, you want to act together, you want to communicate, you want to do other things.”
That’s where the Mocs are now, even if they weren’t early in the season. But they’ll be tested today by the Bulldogs, who advanced to the Southeastern Conference tournament title game before falling to South Carolina, which has been ranked second or third nationally all season and has lost just once – to UConn.
“We just have to take every game the same,” UTC junior forward Moses Johnson said. “Step by step, we have to do a lot of preparing within the framework of who we are and work hard at every level.
“Any time you go up against a team, you have to bring your best.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.