Kevin Lalin knew the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was going to need him Thursday night. He didn’t know it was going to need him 30 times.
“No, I did not,” the running back said when asked if he expected that kind of workload in his first game as a Division I player. “But the workload was there and I was there to take it.”
Lalin ran 30 times for 128 yards and a 6-yard touchdown and caught a pass for 12 more in the Mocs’ 24-10 win over West Georgia at University Stadium. His 140 all-purpose yards were the most by anybody on the field.
Nobody at UTC had opened a career like that in a while. The last was Lance Jackson, who went for 135 yards and two scores against Mercer in the spring 2021 finale, the year the Football Championship Subdivision played in the spring because of COVID-19.
Lalin did it with an offense that was barely recognizable from the one the Mocs drew up in August.
“You saw what we were playing with offensively,” eighth-year coach Rusty Wright said. “We were down six wideouts, got one and a half running backs.”
So the plan was Lalin, and then more Lalin. UTC ran the ball 51 times for 149 yards, held it for 36 minutes, 43 seconds and converted 10 of 17 third downs. Lalin had 30 of those carries and 128 of those yards.
“We didn’t have a whole lot of choice,” Wright said. “We were kind of limited on some things we could do, so he was going to get a steady dose of it tonight. I was more worried about him being tired and us finding a way to get him out. But no, he’s a good, hard-nosed runner.”
He didn’t get tired. He got heavier usage. Lalin carried 11 times for 45 yards in the fourth quarter, seven of those for 33 yards on the nine-play, 52-yard drive that provided the final points. He scored from six yards out with 9:53 left and nobody touched him.
“What a great call down here on the touchdown,” Wright said. “They were moving and doing some things, trying to take the outside zone away. Coach (Joe) Pizzo dialed it up and he walked in. I don’t even know how many times he touched it, but he touched it a bunch.”
One carry all night lost yardage, and it lost one yard. For an offensive line breaking in a first-year starter at quarterback, that mattered.
“As much as we lean on him, I want him to feel like he can lean on us,” junior lineman Devin Lively said. “But it’s huge to have a guy with that experience that we’re going to hand it off to and he ain’t going to have negative plays. He’s going to stick it in there and we’re going to be fine.”
Quarterback Battle Alberson threw two third-quarter touchdown passes to flip a 7-3 halftime deficit. He said the ground game bought him the time.
“He killed it, and the guys up front killed it, giving him room to run,” Alberson said. “And he went out there getting extra yards, making good plays. It’s awesome having him out there for sure.”
The 5-foot-9, 197-pound Lalin has been chasing this kind of night for a while. He broke a foot in his second season at Limestone University in 2024. The school closed that spring, and he landed at Catawba College, where he ran for nearly 1,000 yards and made second-team All-South Atlantic Conference. Then came UTC, Division I and 30 carries in the opener.
“It was very special,” he said. “It comes with the work from preseason, offseason, all of that. Just really tempo work and conditioning.”
The first half was four punts and a missed field goal. Lalin didn’t complicate the fix.
“It was more just sticking to the basics, knowing what we know and knowing what we can do at our best abilities,” he said. “So that is running the ball, and it’s running the ball.”
Then came the part he’d never done. In the locker room, the Mocs broke into the chant they save for wins — “That blue, that gold, that white, too hype!” — and their new running back stood in the middle of it, picking up the words as he went.
“That was my first time hearing it,” Lalin said. “I’m excited to hear it more.”
The Mocs are home this week against Tennessee Tech (1-0), which joined the Southern Conference in July. With the league’s 10 teams playing eight conference games apiece this season, each skips one opponent, and Tech is UTC’s. The already-scheduled game will count as non-conference.
The Golden Eagles beat Monmouth 38-14 in their opener.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.