The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team has done the “big October home game” successfully before.
Quite recently, actually, and coming from different angles.
Two years ago, the Mocs were just 2-3 before defeating rival East Tennessee State University 16-13 at Finley Stadium, which was both the Buccaneers’ first loss of the season and UTC’s first win against a top-10 foe since 2017. Last year, the Mocs were ranked eighth by coaches and 10th by media when they hosted Mercer, which was 11th in both polls, and UTC jumped out to a 24-0 advantage to cruise to a 41-21 victory.
But we know how those seasons ended for the Mocs, too: with a combined 5-4 mark the rest of the way and short of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, including a 31-29 to close the schedule last November at Western Carolina, which visits Finley on Saturday.
There’s enough cause for excitement for the game, set for a 4 p.m. kickoff, even before examining the top-25 matchup between the Mocs (4-1, 3-0 Southern Conference), who are 20th in the coaches poll and 24th in the media poll, and the Catamounts (4-1, 2-0), ranked 17th by coaches and 11th by media. It’s homecoming, and former Mocs star Terrell Owens was on campus this week, with the Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver driving a golf cart to give students rides to class while also imploring them to be at Finley on Saturday. He has been known to be in attendance for the homecoming game, and that could be the case again this year.
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton/ Football fans watch as UTC hosts Kennesaw State on Sept. 9. The Mocs are home again Saturday as Western Carolina visits Finley Stadium for a key SoCon game and a 4 p.m. kickoff. Both teams are ranked in both FCS national polls, and it’s homecoming for UTC.But while there’s an awareness that this is a big game, you’ll have to forgive the Mocs if they’re not putting too much importance on the big picture.
“I’m really not trying to take a different approach that I’ve been taking these past five weeks,” defensive lineman Quay Wiggles said. “I’ve been trying to treat every game like a championship game, and that’s what I’m going to do moving forward. … That’s the mentality we have to have if you want to win. You can’t have the mentality that, ‘Oh, there’s just one game that we’ve got to play big for.’ We’ve got to play big every game, because we never know who could beat us.”
No one has beaten the Mocs since they lost their season opener at North Alabama. Last week’s 23-13 comeback victory at winless Wofford wasn’t their most aesthetically pleasing performance in the streak, but UTC coach Rusty Wright — who has openly questioned the mental toughness of his 2021 team — said it was a win they might not have been able to pull off two seasons ago.
Lose that game, and the one against Western Carolina — on its own four-game winning streak — doesn’t have the same significance.
“I think these guys realize there’s a certain level of trust in us, and we trust them to eventually get themselves going and do those things,” Wright said. “We have to be consistent, and I swear to you, I fight it every day with them preparing themselves like they can go play. I tell them all the time that win or lose, we’ve got to turn it loose and play hard and look like a football team, and if we do that, we’ll be on the better end more than not.”
While the 2022 Mocs struggled with attrition more than anything else, Wright is still trying to recover and grow from the team two years ago, which had all the preseason hype in the world but started off with a poor loss to Austin Peay, ended with another to The Citadel and never really put together the sort of complete effort expected from a veteran-laden team. Wright hasn’t stopped looking for ways to improve as a coach and improve his team, and this year that included starting spring practice at the beginning of February to finish earlier than usual and allow more time in the weight room before camp.
This UTC team, despite its success over the first month of the season, seems to have room for improvement the past two teams didn’t quite have. With so many new faces being asked to take on increased roles, there’s upside for the 2023 Mocs.
“Things are just completely different,” Wright said. “Even last Saturday, when it looked like we were slow and lethargic and things weren’t happening, I knew we were a better football team and I knew it was just going to be a matter of time if we didn’t do anything stupid along the way before we would get it figured out. I didn’t panic, I didn’t yell, I didn’t scream; it was actually a really good locker room to walk into at halftime, calm and collected.
“I think there’s enough people that believe in what you’re telling them and trying to do what we’re asking them to do that it’s changed some things.”
The only added significance of this game from the program’s perspective is that it’s the next game. Besides, next week there’s a trip to Mercer, which has been lurking around the top 25, then a home game against ETSU, then two weeks later a visit from Furman, currently in the top five of both polls.
So assigning greater significance to this week while not appreciating what lies ahead is just not happening.
“I think you just keep the same preparation that we’ve been doing, week in and week out,” quarterback Chase Artopoeus said. “I don’t think we necessarily have to do anything extra, because that could lead to some issues, or definitely do anything less. I think what we’ve been doing these first couple of weeks has been working, so I think that just keeping that constant preparation and just staying within yourself is definitely a good thing.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.