There will come a time when University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball coach Lamont Paris can just coach.
It’s not this season.
Paris’s first year has been spent largely working on skills development of his players, trying to make them as game-ready as possible. Results have been seen in the growth of some individual players from their first year in the program to now, or in some cases from their first game to now.
Junior Nat Dixon has raised his scoring average from 2.6 points as a sophomore to 14.9 this season, while shooting 45 percent from the field and 76 percent – up from 59 percent last season – at the free-throw line.
Dixon’s averages were aided by a 14-game stretch from Dec. 17 to Feb. 1 in which he averaged 18.1 points per game, with six games of at least 20 points. He ranks fifth in the Southern Conference in 3-point shooting at 41 percent.