The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team overcame a bad first half to beat Mercer on Wednesday night, and the Mocs appeared to use some of that momentum to build a 13-point lead Saturday against Wofford.
But in a concerning recurring theme, UTC fell apart in the second half, allowing 55 points and getting dominated by the Terriers in a 77-59 Southern Conference loss at McKenzie Arena.
The stats for the final 20 minutes were quite amazing. Wofford (8-4, 5-1) missed 22 shots in the second half: 17 field goals and five free throws. The Terriers grabbed 14 of those rebounds and turned them into 15 second-chance points. The points allowed were the second most by the Mocs (11-4, 2-4) in a half this season, trailing only the 56 surrendered in the second half of a 92-87 loss at The Citadel one week earlier.
Then there were the turnovers. The Mocs had played five SoCon games prior to Saturday; four times they had 10 turnovers or fewer. Against Wofford, they had 10 in the second half alone.
With coach Lamont Paris having only nine players available and using seven-man rotations, there just aren't many options for the Mocs when someone isn't playing well - and Saturday provided another example of how challenging that has been.
Stefan Kenic has been UTC's most reliable inside presence and was coming off a 27-point outing against Mercer, but the 6-foot-9 senior struggled against the Terriers, missing nine of his 10 shots from the field and finishing with just four points in 26 minutes.
The whole team struggled in the second half, though, with the Mocs unable to effectively score from anywhere. And when the shots quit falling early, it snowballed. Malachi Smith, who scored a team-best 15 points, missed an uncontested point-blank layup, and other shots starting rimming out.
On top of that, Wofford point guard Storm Murphy got going, which led to Morgan Safford getting going, which aided in Tray Hollowell getting going. The trio of Terriers scored 37 points in the second half and controlled the game on both ends of the court. Murphy wound up with a game-high 23 points, followed by Safford (19); Hollowell finished with 10.
UTC's Smith was joined in double-digit scoring by David Jean-Baptiste (13), Josh Ayeni (11) and Darius Banks (11), who shared the team lead in rebounds with Smith at seven.
Maybe a couple of days to rest their legs will help the Mocs, who since league competition started have seemed to play better on Wednesdays, when their record is 2-1 as opposed to 0-3 on Saturdays. Either way, they can use the time off.
Samford (5-7, 1-4), which UTC beat 73-68 in Chattanooga on Jan. 6 and lost 82-70 to UNC Greensboro on Saturday, is the next opponent. Tipoff is set for 8 p.m. Wednesday in Birmingham, Alabama.
Mocs star
Paris noted after the game that he "probably should have played Josh Ayeni more." The 6-foot-7 South Alabama graduate transfer has upped his production in recent games, and he had 11 points and was a plus-two in his 18 minutes on the court Saturday. There are some conditioning challenges with Ayeni, but UTC is going to have to find a way for him to play more.
Key stat
The Mocs outscored Wofford by 11 points in the 13 minutes and 24 seconds that Kenic was on the bench. They were outscored 60-31 in the 26:36 he played, as the Terriers appeared to seek out matchups against Kenic. When one of the top players on roster that's already limited can't stay on the court, that's going to cause problems.
Turning point
The Mocs had a total of six points in a 7:33 span of the second half. Wofford had 21 during that time, which included an 11-2 run that put away a game that had been teetering for most of the final 20 minutes.
Quotable
"Fifty-five (points allowed) in the second half. What are we doing? We're not serious about winning." - Paris
"Where depth really hurts you is that if a guy is not playing well, or a guy can't get a stop, you have a difficult time subbing them out. That's where the lack of depth gets you more than anything. Fatigue is definitely a thing, but there are some days when they are not going to have it on one side of the ball or the other. Occasionally, it's going to be both, and on those days guys' minutes have to be shortened down, and you can't do that when your bench is short." - Paris
"We have to compete the entire game. We have to stay locked in as a team and stay together, and I think moving forward, this is a good experience to take with us." - Smith
Final thought
There's no perfect remedy to what ails the Mocs. Hope is pretty much all they have at this point, and any such optimism is built on the belief that K.C. Hankton, who has missed the past five games with an injury, will come back soon. That would give the Mocs an eight-player rotation and some versatility. Until then, there will be good days and bad days, and all the coaching staff - and training staff - can do is keep the players as fresh as possible in the league grind.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.