There are a number of college basketball teams that can find ways to win when they don't play their best.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's program isn't one of them.
The Mocs shot poorly, did not defend well and basically were beaten in every aspect of their 73-56 loss to Samford last Saturday in Birmingham in their Southern Conference season opener. The loss dropped UTC to 6-8 overall with three consecutive home games on the horizon, starting with Western Carolina at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at McKenzie Arena.
Coach Lamont Paris was frank afterward about his team, which shot 35 percent from the field and hoisted a season-high 36 3-pointers in the loss.
"Every game that we don't play well will be like this," Paris said. "Every game we play well, we'll have a chance to win. If we don't play well, we'll lose."
A positive is that with the balanced SoCon schedule, the Mocs will play the Bulldogs again. Perhaps by then one of the injured freshman forwards on the roster - James Lewis or Duane Moss - will be back, but in their absence UTC was left with three inside options: senior Joshua Phillips, who made his first-ever UTC start and totaled 12 points and five rebounds in 31 minutes; junior Makinde London, who played only 23 minutes and had 10 points and seven rebounds before fouling out; and 6-foot-3 usual guard Jonathan Bryant, a freshman who played a season-high 16 minutes and had three rebounds but missed all four of his shots (three field-goals attempts, one free throw).
"We'll just continue to take things game by game. That's all we can do," sophomore Makale Foreman said. "We'll move on to the next one and put this behind us, but we really are looking at the big picture, and we'll see how the rest of this year plays out."
After Thursday's game against the Catamounts, the Mocs will face a pair of big tests in East Tennessee State and Furman in their next two home appearances.
Paris was more concerned about the next practices after last Saturday's loss than the next game.
"What does that mean? We're going to win them because we're at home?" Paris said. "We've got one game, another game. Who's the next game? Where's it at? We've got practice before that, a couple of practices. We haven't talked about the next game. We have practices in between there, and we've got to get better.
"It's one game and we like to win them, one by one, and we'll get another chance to play these guys, but I didn't mention it one time (in the locker room), because who cares about that?
"We're going to play somebody else next with a different color jersey on, and we need to play better to win that one."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @gene henleytfp.