UTC's Greg Pryor (1) lays the ball in as he goes baseline. The Mercer Bears Chattanooga Mocs in Southern Conference Basketball action at McKenzie Arena on February 25, 2017.Greg Pryor spoke bluntly Saturday evening. So did Matt McCall after his University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team lost to Mercer on senior day.
It seems a lot of people, including the senior standout and his coach, believed they had put up with enough. The Mocs' loss gave the program its first three-game losing streak since the 2014-15 season - and so their first in McCall's tenure - while dropping UTC to 19-10 overall and 10-7 in the Southern Conference heading into tonight's regular-season finale at The Citadel (10-20, 3-14).
The Mocs won't play again until they face Wofford at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in the SoCon tournament quarterfinals at the Asheville (N.C.) Civic Center.
Pryor had one word when asked what was missing: heart.
"We've got all the talent in the world, but if we ain't got heart, not a solid team, the results are going to show," he said. "I can't give nobody heart. It's got to be you. You've got to have that in yourself, got to have that fight in yourself. I can't bless people with that. I wasn't blessed with the privilege to give people heart.
"I would be in the NBA if I could make people that much better around me."
The Mocs' defensive effort was there in the first half of Saturday's 64-54 loss as their offense tried to find its way. They led 23-17 at the midway point, but after a halftime incident that led to seniors Tre' McLean and Johnathan Burroughs-Cook not starting the second half, McLean took his jersey off, stormed to the locker room and did not return until eight minutes remained in the game.
He did not play in the second half and will not play tonight in his hometown of Charleston, S.C., because of "conduct detrimental to the team."
"I have to be able to respond the right way," McCall said. "When things go wrong, I have to be able to respond the right way, and we have to learn how to do that. Some of our guys don't have any idea how to respond when things don't go well, and it's going to catch up to them - whether it's five years from now or 10 years from now, it's going to catch up to them."
McCall said the Mocs have not been connected on offense, which has led to a lot of their trouble in the final weeks of the regular season. The Mocs have done a lot of teasing where their potential is concerned, scoring 91 points against UNC Greensboro on Feb. 2 and 73 at Wofford nine days later, but too many times the offense has bogged down while the defense has played well.
The Mocs are 17-2 this season when scoring 70 points - the losses were on a last-second shot at Vanderbilt and 76-71 at East Tennessee State University - but too many times they've failed to reach that number. They're 2-8 in those games.
"I'm extremely concerned," McCall said. "I don't like where our team is at from a connected standpoint. When you look around the country and you see teams that are winning championships - whether it's SoCon, NCAA, SEC - you see connected teams that are really pulling for each other to do something great. We were a connected team last year but we're not connected right now.
"There's different things we've done to get there, but now it's time for a change to see if we can get there. It's either going to be four more games or two, and we're going to be fighting and grinding until the clock goes to zero, and I still think we can compete and go out in Asheville and compete, but we can't do that if we're not connected."
McCall said he's willing to play as many - or as few - players as needed to change the situation.
"If you're open, but I miss you and I shoot, how do you respond? Do you throw your hands up in the air? Or do you try to get an offensive rebound? Do you scream and yell at that teammate?" McCall asked. "That's not being connected."
A lot of things came easy for the Mocs last season. There were a lot of players who returned with extra determination because of the sour ending of the 2014-15 season, when they were a popular pick to win the SoCon championship but were bounced in the quarterfinals by Furman for UTC's fourth consecutive one-and-done showing at the league tournament.
Players rallied around each other, defeating Georgia and Illinois on the road. They shed tears as a team when senior Casey Jones was lost for the season with a dislocated ankle, then won 24 hours later at Dayton.
They earned 29 victories and fulfilled the mission of winning an elusive championship. Returning three starters from last season and getting an extra year from Jones - a two-time All-SoCon first team selection - made the Mocs a popular pick to do a lot of damage this season.
But before the school year even started, negative things started transpiring. Athletic forward Traevis Graham was dismissed from the program after an off-campus incident. Chuck Ester - the team's best player for the system UTC runs - was lost to a torn ACL. The Mocs received good news when promising sophomore Makinde London was declared eligible, but he has sometimes struggled to find his place in the system despite showing glimpses of what he can do.
McCall called the season "the most challenging year of my life" due to the expectations. The standard hasn't been set for wins, but for titles, and the pressure got to a lot of people within the program.
It's not over for the Mocs, because the worst thing about a mid-major conference - that only one NCAA tournament bid is typically awarded to the league - is also the best, and with a win tonight and three wins in Asheville, a lot of what happened in February can be forgotten.
But there's a long way to go.
"The final chapter is not written until the last game," Pryor said. "Until then, you never know what'll happen. We're a real talented team. We've just got to find the heart in each other to be a team and not just basketball players playing basketball.
"If we can do that, there's no telling where we can go."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.