Sitting in Chattem Basketball Practice Facility at 8 a.m. on Monday morning, John Shulman, Chattanooga’s tired-eyed coach, tried to propagate more faith.
“I still think we’ve got something in the tank, but we’ve had something in the tank all year,” he said.
The Southern Conference tournament in Asheville, N.C., is less than two weeks away. UTC is a shadow of the team that was picked to finish first in the league’s North Division. The Mocs were advertised by Shulman and themselves as a senior-laden team that’s deep in talent and high on moxie.
That same team is now 10-19 overall and 4-12 in the SoCon.
Shulman was showed a stat Monday morning. First, he pushed it aside and continued making a point. He sipped his Diet Coke. Then he asked to see it again.
Keegan Bell, Omar Wattad and Ricky Taylor — the Mocs’ three senior guards who have accumulated 2,942 points in 12 total years of Division I basketball — are a combined 16-for-84 (19.0 percent) from the field over the last three games, including 6-for-51 (11.8 percent) from 3-point distance. Shulman raked his hand over his face.
That spoke louder than any words.
Bearing a heavy weight as the captain of a sinking ship, Shulman is in a bind when it comes to his trio of senior guards. The above numbers can’t be ignored. In three games, Bell, Wattad and Taylor accounted for 45.2 percent of the team’s field-goal attempts (84 of 186) and shot a combined 19.0 percent. That math alone makes it nearly impossible to win.
“And yet we nearly won two of those three games,” Shulman pointed out. “Two extra shots fall and we win.”
But they didn’t. If the senior trio had shot even 30 percent, UTC might have beaten UNCG and The Citadel in routs. But they didn’t.
With only former walk-on Dontay Hampton and freshman Ronrico White as serviceable backups, Shulman has continually told the UTC fan base (and himself) that things would turn around for his senior guards. It hasn’t happened. All three are averaging below their points per game from a year ago and only Taylor is shooting over 36 percent from the field.
Then there is the most sobering stat. While Taylor has struggled through shooting spells from game to game, Bell and Wattad have resided in a desert for most of the season. The two have accounted for 263 missed 3-pointers — 59.9 percent of the team’s total missed 3-pointers this year.
Discussing the shooting woes of his veteran backcourt, Shulman harps on a belief he’s had to keep all season.
“We’re going to make two more — we’re going to, I’ve seen it — I haven’t seen it right now, but it’s ... we’re going to make two more,” he said resiliently.
That steadfastness is born from a lack of options. Hampton is serviceable and White is developing. Neither is going to morph into an all-league player over night. Bell and Wattad were both preseason All-SoCon selections and Taylor was the team’s second-leading returning scorer. They are anchors.
Unless the Mocs’ struggling shooters are suddenly reborn, something will need to change before the season finally fizzles out in the first round of the SoCon tournament. The quick-trigger threes clearly haven’t worked. There’s 29 tapes of game film to prove it. Perhaps, pass first, shoot second?
Junior center Drazen Zlovaric’s scoring touch has gradually improved over the course of the season and he is, far and away, the team’s most consistent and reliable scoring option. Z. Mason, who practiced Monday and is expected to return from a knee injury this week, averaged 13.0 points per game at 57.6 percent shooting in four games before his injury.
Here’s the problem, though. Shulman preached in the preseason that the Mocs were going to do away with their over reliance on the 3-pointer this season. They were going to pound it inside. It didn’t work because Zlovaric hadn’t played in a year after transferring from Georgia and Mason hadn’t played basketball since high school after going to Ole Miss to play football. There was rust. Lots of it. The team’s original starting center, Chris Early (dismissed from the team), was too inconsistent.
As the losses began to mount, UTC slowly resorted to its old ways. Threes flew with reckless abandon. Shulman didn’t rein it in.
Now, here the Mocs stand, with more questions than answers and two weeks to figure it all out.
Unless viable offensive options are weighed on and ill-advised decisions are eliminated, Chattanooga will lose its final two regular-season games and travel to Asheville for a one-and-done trip. Three players cannot account for nearly half a team’s field-goal attempts and shoot under 20 percent. The basketball gods won’t allow it.
Shulman knows this. That’s why when he says, “We just need one ball to go in. Then we’ll get that bump, we’ll get that yeah, finally, now we caught a break at the right time,” he follows it by saying, “I mean, you can spin it how you want to spin it, I don’t have any other choice of how to spin it right now.”
