Nat Dixon, left, shoots the ball as Andrew Fleming, right, takes aim during UTC Mocs basketball practice on Thursday at the Chattem Practice Facility on campus.Jim Foster is ready to see his players in action.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach, speaking before the team’s first practice Thursday at Chattem Practice Facility, said that with all the time his Mocs have spent together in the offseason, he wants to see “what shape we’re in.”
“I want to see how cohesive we are,” Foster said. “We’ve spent a lot of time together, and that should manifest itself in how we are on the floor. We’re ahead on some aspects, and it’s going to take a while on some others.”
One thing to watch will be the development of junior guard Chelsey Shumpert, who is coming back from a knee injury that sidelined her after the third game of the 2015-16 season. With the Mocs losing only one senior from a year ago – lead guard Alicia Payne, who is now a graduate assistant – the 5-foot-4 2015 All-Southern Conference performer with 62 career starts should make the transition seamlessly once she gets back to full health.
“I’m a little nervous since it’s been a total year since I’ve played, but the summer helped since we went live a little bit,” Shumpert said. “I’m just getting used to everything – the speed, the cutting, doing all type things like that – so it’s exciting.”
UTC men also begin
Matt McCall’s men’s team stepped on the practice floor with a slightly different feel Thursday. The Mocs had been a trendy pick to win the Southern Conference in each of the past few seasons, but it wasn’t until breaking through with three wins in Asheville earlier this year that they could get attain the championship they’d been yearning for since the last one in 2009.
Yet with a six-player senior class, the Mocs have set their goals of not just competing this season against a tough schedule, but repeating as SoCon champs.
“We’re going into the season just taking things one game at a time. We’re not going to focus or harp on what we did last year,” senior point guard Greg Pryor said. “We know it’s going to be a target on our back, but there’s nothing we can really do about that. We’ve just got to go in, play our game, play not to lose and play to win.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.