On the surface, Saturday’s 62-47 win by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team over visiting King University was impressive.
Sure, the Tornado are a NCAA Division II program, but the Mocs (5-3) led from the start, built an early double-digit lead and never were really threatened in their third game — and third win — in six days. For coach Shawn Poppie, though, the results did not meet his expectations.
While UTC’s starters put up strong numbers again — Yazz Wazeerud-Din with 15 points; Abbey Cornelius with 12 points and 12 rebounds; Addie Porter with 11 points, five rebounds and seven assists; fab freshman Raven Thompson with 16 rebounds and nine points — a bench that hasn’t had the opportunity to show what it can do didn’t shine when it got the chance Saturday.
King’s reserves, in fact, outscored the Mocs’ 30-9.
“We have to get some more depth,” Poppie said. “We are asking too much out of that starting five. I was, honestly, very disappointed in my bench. They had the opportunity, for the first time in a while, to show something, but they did not take advantage of it.”