University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball coach Deandra Schirmer believed her team did enough on defense to win Saturday’s game at Samford.
It was the struggles on the other end of the court that did the Mocs in against the Bulldogs.
UTC overcame a slow start to build a three-point halftime lead in Birmingham, Alabama, and the game was tied entering the fourth quarter, but the Mocs shot 15% from the field in the final period and failed to hit a field goal in the final 5:04 on their way to a 55-50 loss in Southern Conference play.
Samford (10-16, 5-5) secured a split of the regular-season series with UTC, which beat the Bulldogs 69-63 on Jan. 16 in Chattanooga, and ended a four-game winning streak within the series for the Mocs.
Despite the defeat, UTC (12-12, 7-4) remains third in the SoCon standings with two weeks remaining in the regular season — behind UNC Greensboro (19-6, 10-1) and Wofford (15-8, 7-3) — and three games left on the schedule for the Mocs before tournament time. UTC faces East Tennessee State (15-11, 6-5) at 2 p.m. next Saturday in Johnson City, then closes its home schedule with games against Furman on Feb. 27 and Wofford on March 1 at McKenzie Arena.