Tough schedule rolls on for UTC women's basketball

UTC women's basketball coach Jim Foster talks to senior guard Alicia Payne during a game. The Mocs will play their ninth game against top-100 competition this season when they face Stanford tonight in California.
UTC women's basketball coach Jim Foster talks to senior guard Alicia Payne during a game. The Mocs will play their ninth game against top-100 competition this season when they face Stanford tonight in California.

The nonconference gauntlet is nearly over for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball team.

But like the final 500 meters of a cross-country race, the finish won't be easy.

The Mocs (8-4) are currently in California, and they will face 12th-ranked Stanford (9-2) tonight at 10 EST. UTC has one more nonconference game, next week at home against Harvard, before starting conference play Jan. 6 at home against Wofford.

UTC enters tonight's game with an RPI rank of 23. It will be the program's ninth game against top-100 competition this season, with the Mocs posting a 4-4 record so far in those games.

So the Mocs shouldn't be intimidated by playing Stanford, and if it's a close game, UTC coach Jim Foster believes his team is prepared because of the level of competition it has faced.

"What we've seen in our last two games is the schedule we play, we had to play every night," Foster said after wins over East Carolina and UNC-Wilmington recently. "We had to play every minute of every game. We're starting to get to a point in the season where teams that don't have to do that, maybe they don't have the intensity that's necessary to finish out games.

"We capped the last two games because we learned by playing (that) it's about 40 minutes. I think we've played as strong a schedule as anyone in the country. The by-product of that is we get a little tougher."

A lot of that toughness has been in the Mocs' ability to handle adversity. They've dealt with season-ending injuries to freshman point guard Molly Melton and three-year starting guard Chelsey Shumpert - who led all scorers with 18 points in this game a year ago - and sophomore forward Aryanna Gilbert has been sidelined by injury as well.

That has caused the playing rotation to be very fluid over the past few weeks, but it's not as much of a problem now as it was, and the team feels better for it.

"We have some key players down right now, but we can't focus on that," sophomore Keiana Gilbert said. "They've learned to be vocal leaders since they can't be on the court with us. They help us see what we do see. They lead us from there."

In Stanford, the Mocs will be facing a hungry team that was ranked seventh in the country last season when it came to McKenzie Arena only to be beaten 54-46 by UTC despite winning the rebounding battle 46-32. The Mocs made five more 3-pointers in that game and had 12 more points off turnovers.

In talking about her team's upcoming schedule after an 83-41 victory over Cal State Bakersfield on Dec. 22, Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, who is in her 38th season, said that loss hasn't been forgotten.

"The girls know you've got to come out ready to play every game," the Hall of Fame coach said. "No game from here on out is going to be easy."

But the Cardinal haven't forgot what was their first nonconference loss to an unranked team since falling 74-63 to St. Mary's on Nov. 17, 2000.

"Chattanooga beat us last year," VanDerveer said. "We'll remember them."

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.

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