Outside of the 3-point line, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team was average at best Saturday.
But average was good enough, because the Mocs were much better than that inside the line.
They pounded Mercer for 40 points in the paint and shot 61 percent from the field in a 74-56 Southern Conference win over the Bears at Hawkins Arena in Macon, Ga.
In the past four days, UTC (8-8, 2-0) has road wins against the teams that ranked second and third in the SoCon preseason poll. The Mocs’ next three games are at home, starting next Saturday against East Tennessee State.
Jasmine Joyner led the Mocs with 24 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and four blocks – all team highs – and she also had a steal while playing all 40 minutes. Lakelyn Bouldin scored 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting, and Keiana Gilbert added 15 points while shooting 7-of-9.
“We played a solid four quarters of basketball,” UTC coach Jim Foster said on the postgame radio broadcast. “We got a lot of backdoor baskets; that’s what you do when teams come out aggressive.
“They (Mercer) don’t play a lot of man, but when they do, they come at you. If you do what you’re supposed to do, you get a lot of backdoor releases. We have a lot of those (releases) in our offense, and our players executed them perfectly.”
The Bears’ Keke Calloway made a 3-pointer on the first possession of the second quarter to cut UTC’s lead to 15-13, but the Mocs answered with 13 straight points during a span of 7 minutes, 23 seconds to assume control. Mercer missed all eight of its shots and committed five of its seven turnovers in the game during that span.
UTC’s lead didn’t fall below 11 the rest of the way.
Kahlia Lawrence, last season’s SoCon player of the year, finished with 24 points to lead the Bears (12-4, 1-1). Calloway had 18. The two combined to make eight of the team’s nine 3-pointers while taking 36 of the Bears’ 60 shots, but Mercer shot 35 percent from the field for the game.