Stopping rival East Tennessee State University from getting going on offense kept the University of Tennessee women's basketball team moving toward the No. 1 seed for the Southern Conference tournament.
UTC picked up a big road win Saturday, beating the Buccaneers 56-41 at Brooks Gymnasium in Johnson City to improve to 22-3 overall and 10-0 against SoCon opponents with four games remaining in the regular season.
Coupled with Furman's 64-51 upset of second-place Wofford (15-9, 7-3) this past week, it gives the Mocs the opportunity to clinch at least a tie for the league's regular-season championship with a home win Thursday against last-place Western Carolina. Tipoff in that matchup is set for 7 p.m. at McKenzie Arena.
UTC won the SoCon tournament last year in Shawn Poppie's first season as coach, but the Mocs did so as the No. 2 seed after finishing behind Wofford in the standings.
This season's Mocs have won 11 straight games — their longest streak since a run of the same length in 2015-16 — but the latest one didn't start off pretty. In fact, there wasn't much pretty about the visitors' performance except the final score and the play of senior Jada Guinn, who finished with 19 points and 16 rebounds. The Bucs had no answer for the 5-foot-9 guard as she shot 9-for-16 from the field, but the rest of the Mocs were a combined 9-for-38.
UTC won the game on the other end, though, holding the Bucs (16-9, 5-5) to 29% shooting from the field and turning 15 ETSU turnovers into 18 points.
That allowed the Mocs to complete what will be their longest road swing of SoCon play this season 3-0, with Saturday's success following a 55-39 win at Samford on Feb. 8 and a 61-52 victory at Mercer on Feb. 10.
"I thought we were able to hold our cool a little bit there and make enough plays down the stretch," UTC coach Shawn Poppie said on the postgame radio broadcast. "But I'm proud of our defensive effor. That's three games in a row where we've been really, really good on the defensive end, and you've got to have that on the road.
"These three games we came through, to win all three and do it the way we did, it wasn't the prettiest offensive nights, but I thought that we showed a lot of toughness and we continue to just find ways to win."
UTC sophomore forward Raven Thompson struggled from the floor (4-for-17), but she hit all seven of her free throws and finished with 15 points and seven rebounds as the Mocs improved to 68-25 in the all-time series with ETSU. They've won five straight in the series.
Addie Porter chipped in nine points and seven rebounds, while Sigrun Olafsdottir scored six points on a pair of 3s. More notably, Olafsdottir continued her quest to become the SoCon defensive player of the year by limiting guard Neveah Brown — ETSU's leading scorer at 14.1 points per contest going into the game — to six points on 3-for-9 shooting.
Breanne Beatty was the Bucs' leading scorer Saturday with nine points, including four on free throws. ETSU led 8-7 after the first quarter, but UTC was up 28-20 at halftime and 41-28 entering the fourth.
Compiled by Gene Henley. Contact him at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.