Defense has been the calling card of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team throughout coach Deandra Schirmer’s first season.
Thursday, it carried the day — and moved the Mocs into the Southern Conference semifinals as they seek their third straight championship at the league tournament.
Second-seeded UTC held seventh-seeded Mercer scoreless for 7:04 of the second quarter, allowing the Mocs to go on a 13-0 run over that span to assume control of their quarterfinal matchup and roll to a 68-47 win on the first day of this year’s tourney at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, North Carolina. UTC, which improved to 15-13 this season, has won its past seven SoCon tournament games since an overtime loss in the 2022 quarterfinals.
Those past two titles were won under coach Shawn Poppie, who moved on to Clemson last spring after the Mocs’ back-to-back appearances in the NCAA tournament that were the program’s first since 2017, and while Schirmer was new to the SoCon and the Division I ranks this season, she’s not new to tournament time.
In five seasons as head coach at Georgia’s Valdosta State, Schirmer led the Lady Blazers to the NCAA Division II tournament all four times it was held during her tenure, last year as the Gulf South Conference tournament champions. And she’s well aware what the standard is for UTC, which has won the SoCon tourney 20 times — 14 more than any other program.