The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team begins this week in a much better place than last Monday.
A week ago, the Mocs were coming off their first loss in Southern Conference play this season, a double-digit defeat at Furman. That pushed UTC into a tie for first place in the league standings with Mercer, with the teams scheduled to face off last Thursday.
But the same locked-in team that handled the Bears by 18 points Jan. 7 in Macon came to work the second time around as well, with the Mocs beating the visitors by 20 at McKenzie Arena. They followed that with a tough win over Samford that required perseverance, outscoring the Bulldogs 13-2 over the final 6:06 Saturday at McKenzie.
“During the course of the season, you’ve got to win grind-out games,” UTC coach Jim Foster said. “You’ve got to be in them, and you’ve got to win them. That determines what kind of season you have.”
With the Mocs still figuring some things out, the final stretch of Saturday’s game was more indicative of a team that was starting to learn how to work as a unit as opposed to a team that couldn’t. Down five points, the Mocs scored on six of their final nine possessions while holding the Bulldogs to one field goal – a Lydia McGee layup – in that span.