After playing virtually even with Alabama for the first 30 minutes, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball team ran out of gas in the final 10, falling 61-52 on Saturday at Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa.
A four-game winning streak for the Mocs (6-4) came to a close with their fourth single-digit loss of the season, this time to an opponent that was picked fourth in the preseason Southeastern Conference poll.
Yazz Wazeerud-Din finished with 21 points and made a trio of 3-pointers for UTC, Addie Porter added 12 points and nine rebounds, Sigrun Olafsdottir scored seven and Abbey Cornelius had five with seven rebounds and three assists. All four played more than 39 minutes against the Crimson Tide (6-2), with Olafsdottir and Porter on the court from start to finish. Wazeerud-Din played all but 17 seconds, and Cornelius sat out 50 seconds.
"I'm proud of that locker room," UTC coach Shawn Poppie said on the postgame radio broadcast. "They were awesome. They are competing their butts off for this program, for this university, for our staff, for each other. I've got to find a way to get a couple of bodies out there because we're playing too many minutes for certain kids, but the ones we've got out there are just competing and trying to do it our way, and we've given ourselves a shot.
"It's gut-wrenching, because you come down that stretch and you want it so bad. We just made a couple of mistakes, and some of it was fatigue. We kept saying it: 'We're going to run out of gas.' And we did a little bit down the stretch there."
The Mocs shot 24% (4-for-17) in the fourth quarter, compared to 54% by the Tide, who had three scorers finish in double figures: Brittany Davis (14), Jada Rice (12 with seven rebounds and three blocks) and JaMya Mingo-Young (10). The Mocs trailed just 50-48 after Olafsdottir beat the shot clock to hit a 3 with 3:28 remaining, but Alabama slowly pulled away, with the back-breaker a Hannah Barber 3 that made it 59-52 with 41 seconds to play.
The Mocs' December road tour continues when they face another SEC member, Tennessee, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in Knoxville. The Lady Volunteers (4-4) host Virginia Tech on Sunday before taking on the Mocs.
Compiled by Gene Henley. Contact him at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.