MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – A.J. Caldwell won’t win any superlatives on the basketball court.
At 6-foot-5, he’s certainly not the biggest, nor the fastest. On the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga basketball team, he really doesn’t have a set position, as he can be seen ball-handling, screening, or taking advantage of open shots on offense; or guarding point guard, wings or bigs defensively.
Regardless, he finds a way to contribute and as he continues to do so the Mocs continue to win.
The latest example was an 80-70 victory over Middle Tennessee State Monday at the Murphy Center, improving the Mocs to 4-0 for the first time since the 1987-88 season. Caldwell didn’t make a major dent in any specific category, but he contributed five points, six rebounds, five assists and five steals – including a big theft with 2:30 remaining, when he deflected a Jalen Jordan pass, saved it and passed it forward to Malachi Smith to stretch a six-point lead to 76-68.
“There’s a saying, ‘a jack of all trades, a master of none,’ and I think that’s pretty appropriate to describe A.J.,” UTC head coach Lamont Paris said. “We’ve been nicked up with some injuries and because of that we’re playing some guys out of position and one of them is him. But the one thing that you always know when he goes in is, whatever play I call, he’s going to know it and he’s going to know what his responsibility is.
“He’s a calming presence on what’s going on out there.”
Added Caldwell: “I’m not the most athletic person or the strongest person, but I play really hard on posts and I try to feed my angles and be smarter than some of those other guys that might be more athletic than me.”
Caldwell and Smith are two of the bigger options for the Mocs, with forwards Mark Tikhonenko and Prosper Obidiebube out. The only forwards on the roster currently are seniors Stefan Kenic and Josh Ayeni, and redshirt freshman Jaden Frazier. Ayeni dealt with foul trouble throughout, causing the shift to a smaller lineup of Smith, Caldwell, senior David Jean-Baptiste, freshman Jamaal Walker and Kenic.
Smith had his second double-double of the season, with 18 points, 13 rebounds and four assists. David Jean-Baptiste led the way with 20 points, and Kenic added 17 points.
Trey Doomes continued his solid play with eight points, making all five of his shots (three field goals, two free throws).
The Mocs opened the back-and-forth game up with a 14-2 second-half run which led to the sixth and final lead change and stretched the lead to 73-64 with 4:13 remaining.
“I think that’s good that we faced adversity, because every game is not perfect,” Smith said. “We’ve seen that with Tennessee Tech, and you know we’ve had good shooting nights and we’ve had bad shooting nights, so it’s good for us to get the experience of having to get stops because at the end of the day, you can’t control the shots, but you can control them not scoring.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.