Just a week ago, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball coach Dan Earl admitted that if his team doesn’t shoot well, it will be hard to win games.
This UTC team, Earl’s fourth, isn’t built to lean on its defense. And because of a rash of injuries that has crushed the frontcourt, it’s not often that the Mocs are going to win the rebounding battle. Just as their coach said, this team is going to have to shoot it well to have a chance.
It has taken a while, but with a week remaining in the regular season, things could finally be falling into place for the Mocs, who have won two straight games since dropping three in a row and seven of eight. The makings of a streak were gathered with UTC’s 93-72 win over The Citadel on Saturday at McAlister Fieldhouse in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Mocs improved to 12-17 overall and 6-10 in Southern Conference play while dropping the Bulldogs to 9-20, 6-10. UTC also pulled even with The Citadel in the SoCon standings, tied for eighth in the 10-team league and still hoping to perhaps move up into one of the top six seeds that advance directly to the quarterfinals at the upcoming conference tournament in Asheville, North Carolina.
(READ MORE: Henley: Can the Mocs’ basketball season be salvaged?)
Two days after an impressive 94-90 win against Mercer in Macon, Georgia, to complete a regular-season series sweep of the Bears, UTC avenged a 78-71 home loss to The Citadel from Feb. 7 and did so soundly. The Mocs went on a 25-0 run Saturday in Charleston to build a 29-4 advantage — hitting five of their 14 3-pointers in the game during the hot stretch — and led by as many as 30 points before the Bulldogs made a little run to cut the lead in half in the second half.
The closest the home team would get was 13 points.
“They got some good looks and they have some very good shooters, so it was pretty fortunate for us that they weren’t knocking those down,” said UTC sophomore forward Collin Mulholland, who had 13 points and 11 rebounds. “It was one of those days for us where we just got stuff going really early. It’s really hard not to keep momentum when you get on a run like (the 25-0 run).
“After that, it was just about trying to keep that lead,” added Mulholland, one of the few players back from last season’s run to a SoCon regular-season title and the National Invitation Tournament championship. “They were fighting hard and they started hitting some shots, so then it was like, ‘Let’s not give this away.'”
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In the past two games, the Mocs have shot 61% from the field and are 24-for-51 (47%) from 3-point range. Along with Mulholland, five other Mocs reached double figures in points against the Bulldogs: Jordan Frison and Brennan Watkins finished with 16 each, while Teddy Washington Jr. added 15, Billy Smith scored 14 and Tate Darner had 12. Darner and Frison also had four assists each.
The Bulldogs were led by a double-double from Braxton Williams (26 points, 11 rebounds), who made five 3-pointers, but their only other double-digit scorer was Christian Moore, who had 16 points and eight rebounds. Logan Applegate’s nine points came from a trio of 3-pointers.
The Bulldogs and the Mocs are two games behind the teams currently in seventh place in the SoCon and five games ahead of last-place Virginia Military Institute (6-23, 1-15), so there’s a chance The Citadel and UTC will face off again soon in the league tournament’s opening round.
For now, it’s the Mocs who hold bragging rights about the most recent meeting in a series they lead 76-22 overall — even if Earl and his players are seeking a better start-to-finish performance as tournament time draws near.
“Sometimes there’s ebbs and flows to the game,” Earl said. “Our guys, I was proud of them, they came ready to play. We obviously made shots early, we were feeling good, and then obviously you’ve got to try to close a game out much better than that. We made that game much more difficult than it needed to be. It’s hard to play with a lead, but that’s something we have to learn.”
UTC, which hasn’t won three straight games in more than a month, closes the regular season with a two-game homestand, facing UNC Greensboro (12-17, 8-8) at 7 p.m. Thursday at McKenzie Arena and VMI two days later for a 2 p.m. tipoff.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.