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.”