As the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team was getting ready to walk down the steps to the McKenzie Arena court to watch the NCAA tournament selection show Sunday evening, first-year Mocs coach Shawn Poppie had a message for his team.
Enjoy the moment.
Until now, the only people in the program who had experienced the week leading up to an NCAA tourney knowing their team's name would be called were coaches: Poppie, assistant Jon Goldberg and graduate assistant Jasmine Joyner, the latter two who were with the Mocs in 2017, the last time they qualified for March Madness.
It’s a different experience, one that the current UTC players aren't accustomed to, and Poppie wanted the team to drink it all up.
“I told them to get their phones out and record it all. Enjoy it,” Poppie said. “There’s a lot of people that want to be you, and you have an opportunity to experience it, so enjoy every minute of it, and when we’re not enjoying it, we’ll be working to compete, but other than that, the bus rides, the police escorts, the gear, enjoy it and appreciate it, and hopefully it gets a taste in your mouth that you don’t want it to ever leave.”
That's why, even when they saw "Chattanooga" go across the screen as a No. 16 seed, players were able to enjoy the moment. It's the Mocs' first inclusion into the 68-team field — it was still just 64 teams when they made it six years ago — with their spot earned as Southern Conference tournament champions a week before in Asheville, North Carolina.
It was Poppie who was not quite as thrilled when he saw Atlantic Coast Conference champ Virginia Tech (27-4) as the opponent. After all, it hadn’t even been a full 12 months since UTC athletic director Mark Wharton went to Blacksburg, Virginia, to pluck Poppie — an energetic Hokies assistant at the time — from the program to take over at UTC.
Now he will take his first Mocs team back to the place he was an assistant for six years, battling wits with his former boss, Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks.
It was a game nobody asked for. Or, as Brooks tweeted out Sunday night: “The NCAA is really funny huh @Coach_Poppie I guess no scouting reports are needed!”
But it’s not about Poppie, nor is it about Brooks, though it is about the job Poppie has done, turning a program that won seven games last season into one that is 20-12.
“I don’t know how much he wanted to go there, because he did want this week to be about us,” senior forward Abbey Cornelius said. “But I am excited for him and his family to get to go back there.”
The team had spoken with Joyner about winning in the SoCon tournament, and the Mocs are just now turning their attention to the NCAA tourney. There are definite perks on the way — Cornelius was pretty excited about the gift bags (or “swag bags”) the teams receive — but now that the field has been announced and there’s an opponent to prepare for, the Mocs will get back to business.
“I’ve talked to this group all year about leaning on our experience,” Poppie said. “Although our time in Asheville wasn't the NCAA tournament, it was an opportunity to get to this, and so how we handled ourselves for three games in four days and the emotions that come with that are going to be high.
"Now how do we turn that positivity on the court? I think our biggest thing is how we’re going to be able to flip the page. Virginia Tech is obviously a good basketball team; how do we turn our emotions when something doesn’t go right so we can continue to compete and have a chance?”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.