Abbey Cornelius and the other University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball returning players didn’t know what to expect last March.
The same day the Mocs’ men’s team was returning home from having claimed the Southern Conference championship, meetings were being had in the fourth floor of McKenzie Arena, meetings that would affect the Mocs’ women’s team. Those meetings would ultimately lead to a separation of the university and head women’s coach Katie Burrows, who had either played or coached at her alma mater for nearly half of her life.
A month later, Cornelius and eight other Mocs stood alongside a number of UTC supporters and administrators as new head coach Shawn Poppie was officially introduced.
The team had met Poppie a day or so prior. Asked Tuesday afternoon to describe it, Cornelius said the former Virginia Tech assistant was “full of energy.”
“He walked in, just ready to get this thing going,” Cornelius said. “I think we all knew that; we knew we had something special this year.”
That’s been the case. A year after winning just seven games, with five of those coming in a Southern Conference that was as weak as ever (31st out of 33 conferences), the Mocs enter this season’s conference tournament as the No. 2 seed in a league that improved all the way to the 19th best league in the country. The Mocs finished 17-12 on the year with nine league wins, and will face Furman in the quarterfinals of the league tournament Thursday at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, North Carolina.
Poppie has weaved a tapestry of younger and older, returning players and new into a solid mix. Assistant coach Jon Goldberg was vital in the recruitment of Raven Thompson, who committed the day Burrows was let go, stayed true and on Tuesday was named the SoCon Freshman of the Year. Senior transfer guard Yazz Wazeerud-Din came in and averaged a team-high 15.8 points on her way to first-team all-league honors. Cornelius remained a steadying force, as did holdover guards Addie Porter and Sigrun Olafsdottir.
This team is good enough to win three games and a league championship. Of course, “good enough” may not be good enough for a program that has historically dominated the SoCon, with 15 league championships in 48 seasons of having a program. But that’s what one signs up for when choosing to play — or coach — at UTC, and those expectations aren’t going anywhere.
“Abbey Cornelius, she came here to win a championship,” Poppie said recently. “All of a sudden, as her career goes, although she’s had a good career, the wins haven’t come. So she’s like, what’s going on? We come in, and we believe in her and then all of a sudden, shoulders go back and it’s like, ‘Let me listen.’ They bought into everything that we talked about. The players work every single day on their craft, and it’s little stuff like that that has allowed them to start to believe and then they keep putting in the work, keep putting in the work, keep putting in the work.”
It’s been some time since it felt like the Mocs were in the championship hunt. There was a sharing of a title back in 2019-20, but that team had also started the year 1-13 before making a run to a share of the title. This one feels different, and if that magic can continue to be captured for three days in Asheville, it’s not beyond the realm of comprehension that this team has a chance.
“It’s feels good to be in the mix,” Cornelius, a two-time All-SoCon selection, said. “The season we’ve had in general is completely different from pretty much any year I’ve had here, so to really go into this tournament with some momentum and even more confidence than what we’ve normally had is a good feeling.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.