The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team played well defensively, but the Mocs could never get going on the offensive end of the court and lost 59-51 to Jacksonville State on Thursday night at McKenzie Arena.
It was the Mocs’ final game before opening Southern Conference play next Thursday at East Tennessee State.
Only eight players played for UTC, and only five of them — all starters — scored, led by Raven Thompson’s 18 points and nine rebounds. Abbey Cornelius and Addie Porter each finished with 10 points and Yazz Wazeerud-Din chipped in nine, but the Mocs (8-7) shot only 33% from the field and were 3-for-17 from 3-point range.
“We weren’t as good as we’d been all year on the defensive end tonight, but we were good enough,” UTC coach Shawn Poppie said. “We have to find a way to score the ball better. We’ve got to get better looks, we’ve got to be more efficient, and I think that in turn helps your defense.
“When you can score, you just have a little different step on the defensive end, and right now there’s some shoulders being shrugged because we’re struggling so much on the offensive end scoring.”
The Mocs found themselves trailing for more than 34 minutes against the Gamecocks, who won 24 games in 2021-22 and improved to 7-4 this season with their fourth straight win. UTC was within single digits of the lead for much of the second half and used a 15-8 spurt across the third and fourth quarters to pull even at 46 on a Wazeerud-Din 3-pointer with 6:40 remaining.
The Mocs missed their next nine shots, though, and the visitors’ lead stretched back to eight points before a Thompson layup with nine seconds remaining.
Porter played all 40 minutes and Wazeerud-Din sat out just 11 seconds of game time. Sigrun Olafsdottir played nearly 34 minutes before fouling out and Cornelius clocked 31:30, with Thompson playing the least of the starters at 27:38.
“This stuff is bothering them,” Poppie said of the loss, which followed a 60-56 defeat at Marshall on Dec. 21. “They’re going to try to do what we ask, and that’s why I think we’ve got a chance. I’ve got to do a better job of finding a way to help them score the basketball; we’re not scoring at a good enough rate to win games like this.
“With that said, I think it helped us be prepared for the league. So it hurts today and it’ll continue to hurt. I thought we had a wonderful opportunity; we had an awesome crowd and there was some excitement for them to come back. Now we’ve got to earn that back from them.”
Compiled by Gene Henley. Contact him at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.