The words “2015 Southern Conference co-champions” don’t necessarily resonate with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team.
When asked, running back Derrick Craine clinched his teeth. Defensive end Keionta Davis shook his head with a slight, writhing smile.
Last season’s shared title wasn’t quite like the 2013 co-championship, the first for the program since 1984. That was a step in the right direction, and when UTC didn’t make the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs that season despite sharing the title with Furman and Samford (those two did advance), it was a springboard to a 2014 season in which the Mocs basically dusted the competition all around them.
But last year, the Mocs were rolling, ascending to a No. 3 national ranking prior to a loss to Mercer. They bounced back to defeat The Citadel – with which they shared the title – and advance to the second round of the playoffs, but after the season there were a lot of “could have beens” had the Mocs defeated the Bears on Nov. 7, 2015.
“It definitely wasn’t what we wanted, but at the same time it got us where we wanted to go, the playoffs,” Davis said. “This year, the goal is to go undefeated in the SoCon. Right now we’re doing good, but the next game is a must-win and we’re looking forward to it.
“Our ultimate goal is to win the SoCon outright, but we made some mistakes last year that put us in that position where we ended up being co-champions, but we still got in the playoffs. We could have dropped out and not been in, so it was a blessing in disguise. We don’t like sharing championships; we don’t like sharing rings. It’s tough to look at, but it’s the past and right now we’re getting at the solo ring.”
Most of the UTC players don’t look at last season as a shared title. They beat The Citadel head to head and feel the championship was theirs solely, but facts are facts and each team got a trophy as well as rings, which will be presented to The Citadel football team before today’s game.
That game – which starts at 3 p.m. at Johnson Hagood Stadium in Charleston, S.C., and will be televised on Fox Sports Southeast – won’t determine a champion, as the Mocs still have three conference games remaining and the Bulldogs have four. But it could go a long way in figuring things out, since the teams were picked 1-2 in the SoCon preseason poll and both are top-10 teams in the country.
A win today would be UTC’s first over a top-10 opponent since a 38-17 defeat of 10th-ranked Jacksonville State in 2011 and the first over a top-10 SoCon opponent since a 30-27 victory over sixth-ranked Appalachian State on Oct. 28, 2000.
“Right now we’re both undefeated in the SoCon, so it’s definitely something that’s very important to go out and get the win this week, because it could come back and hurt us,” Craine said. “We’ve got to go out there, execute, handle business and get back home with the win.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.