The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team played well in its final nonconference game of the regular season, hanging close before succumbing 74-65 to Big Ten member Indiana on Saturday afternoon in front of 13,574 at Assembly Hall in Bloomington.
The Mocs will head into Southern Conference play with an 8-5 record, with their league opener set for 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 1, against Mercer in Macon, Georgia.
At Indiana, UTC led by as many as seven points in the first half, but the Hoosiers (9-3) used a 10-3 spurt at the end of the second quarter to take a 41-38 halftime lead into the locker room.
UTC shot just 33% from the field and made just four of 15 3-point tries in the second half, which allowed Indiana to build as much as a 13-point lead. The Mocs were able to close the gap to four on a couple of occasions, but they weren’t able to make the shots or get the stops down the stretch to pull off the upset.
“In some ways this game hurts that much more because it was there for the taking,” said UTC coach Dan Earl, whose team had won three in a row. “We got some good looks when the game was close, but we just weren’t able to knock them down, so you can handle that part of it. There were some things in our control, and I thought our guys fought for most of the game, but there was a couple of free-throw line blockouts, a couple loose balls where we reached with one hand instead of two.
“You’re at Indiana. If you want to win that game, you’ve got to grab all those loose balls, and you’ve got to stick with the game plan, execute.”
UTC junior Honor Huff knocked down six 3-pointers and finished with a team-high 20 points on 6-for-13 shooting, with just one of his attempts inside the arc. Trey Bonham and Bash Wieland each scored 11 points, with Wieland adding six rebounds. Frank Champion missed all five of his shots against the bigger Hoosiers, but the 6-foot-7 senior forward had six assists and five rebounds.
Mackenzie Mgbako and Malik Reneau had 14 points apiece for Indiana, with Oumar Ballo and Bryson Tucker just missing double figures at nine each. Ballo and Reneau grabbed eight rebounds apiece, helping the Hoosiers to a 37-29 margin on the glass, and each also handed out four assists. Reneau also had a trio of steals for the Hoosiers, whose 10 turnovers were three fewer than UTC tallied.
“We took them down to the wire. They definitely had a battle with us, and I don’t think they expected that,” Huff said. “They’re bigger and longer, and that kind of hurt us in the end.
“There’s some things we have to clean up, but if we have that mindset and integrity and fight, we’re going to be tough to beat.”
Compiled by Gene Henley. Contact him at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.