Kristian Ozane spent his first football season at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga doing a lot of thinking.
Too much of it, he would say.
“Last year I was thinking too much,” the linebacker said this week. “This year, just kind of go out there and play, just do what I do.”
The difference showed up at Finley Stadium last Saturday night, when not much else did for UTC. Ozane made his first start of the season and led the Mocs with eight tackles in a 24-9 loss to Tennessee Tech, adding a half-tackle for loss, the team’s only quarterback hurry and its only interception.
Eighth-year head coach Rusty Wright watched the video later and saw something he hadn’t seen in a while.
“First time in two years we had two inside linebackers look like inside linebackers. They look the part, and they’re playing the part,” Wright said of the 5-foot-11, 218-pound Ozane and fellow senior Zion Rutledge (5-11, 225), a former Atlanta-area prep standout for Hillgrove who has spent his enter collegiate career in Chattanooga.
It took Ozane a while to get here.
The former Westlake (Louisiana) High School standout arrived in January 2025 from North Carolina’s Davidson College, a nonscholarship Football Championship Subdivision program in the Pioneer Football League, and Ozane was the first of nearly two dozen transfers to publicly commit to the Mocs that offseason. Then a hamstring injury cost him the spring, and with it most of his chance to learn a scheme that asked him to play inside after two seasons spent mostly on the outside.
Defensive coordinator Mike Yeager described him last fall as playing catch-up. Wright was blunter, saying Ozane was learning on the fly, and that he wished the transfer linebacker had gotten those spring practice reps.
“If he stays healthy and keeps progressing,” Wright said then, “by the end of the year, he’ll be a good football player for us.”
Ask Yeager about him now, and the answer is clearly positive.
“He’s light years ahead of where he was,” Yeager said. “He’s learned how to play linebacker. He’s a great communicator, and he understands where he’s supposed to be, and he’s making the plays that he’s supposed to make.”
Ozane credits the calendar more than anything.
“Just learning the playbook and being in the system for two years, you start seeing things a lot faster and it kind of comes natural,” he said.
His biggest play of the night against Tennessee Tech, though, came from effort rather than anticipation.
Trailing 7-6, UTC opened the second half with an onside kick Wright called himself, hoping to steal a possession. The kick didn’t go the required distance, though, and Tennessee Tech took over at UTC’s 39-yard line. On the first snap, safety Kam Baah-Slay got a hand on Jax Leatherwood’s pass that was intended for Maury Sullivan, and Ozane was there at the 28 when it came down.
He doesn’t dress it up.
“The coaches emphasize not loafing at practice and running to the ball,” Ozane said. “Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you get in the right spots from running to the ball. I was just blessed to be able to be in the right spot.”
(READ MORE: UTC’s Wright not biting on criticism from Tennessee Tech coach)
Ozane, who made one start last season while appearing in all 12 games, is part of a defense that has been the steadier half of the roster through the Mocs’ 1-1 start this year. UTC held Tennessee Tech to 237 yards, forced the Golden Eagles into six three-and-out possessions, and gave up just 2.6 yards a carry — and lost by 15.
Ozane’s explanation for the improvement from a rough 2025 — when the defense failed to meet its usual standard and the Mocs went 5-7 for the program’s first losing season since 2017 — has nothing to do with new arrivals.
“If you look at our defense, we’ve got almost all the same guys we had last year,” he said. “A few guys graduated, a few guys left, but it’s almost all the same people. We just bought in better. We took the weight room serious, and we’re playing a lot faster and smarter.”
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The Mocs have just one game remaining before opening their Southern Conference schedule, Saturday’s visit to United Athletic Conference member Eastern Kentucky, when kickoff is set for 6 p.m. at Richmond’s Roy Kidd Stadium. The Colonels are 0-2 after road losses to Western Carolina of the SoCon and Jacksonville State, a Football Bowl Subdivision program in Conference USA.
As for UTC’s offense, it has scored two touchdowns so far, both of those in the season-opening 24-10 win at West Georgia. Wright said Saturday night, after the Mocs were limited to three field goals by Jude Kelley, it was hard to know what to tell his offensive staff.
Ozane said the defense isn’t in the business of telling the Mocs on that side of the ball anything.
“They’re our teammates, they know we’ve got them,” he said. “If they go out there and don’t succeed on the drive, then it’s on us. We’ve got to go stop the (other team’s offense), because at the end of the day, if they score on us, the other team can win. If they never score, it’ll just be zero to zero.
“We signed up to play defense, not offense. We just do what we do.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.