The Chattanooga Mocs men's basketball 2020 edition did a few special things throughout the season. The squad made its mark in the history books while going 20-13, 10-8 in the Southern Conference, and finishing a whisker away from their 24th SoCon Tournament Championship game appearance. GoMocs.com takes a look at this crew's historical touches.
 
The next installment focused on the top-scoring trio of Matt Ryan, Ramon Vila and David Jean-Baptiste. The most recent looked into the rare occurrence Ryan accomplished. Now we take a look at the growth of the program in Coach Lamont Paris' three seasons.
 
Paris decided shortly after taking over what the path toward sustained success looked like. No quick fixes, and it wasn't the easiest of roads, but the program needed a foundation like what started with John Shulman's last year through two years each with Will Wade and Matt McCall.
 
Names like Casey Jones, Eric Robertson and Alex Bran from Shulman, Greg Pryor, Justin Tuoyo, Dee Oldham, Chuck Ester and Tre McLean from Wade and McCall's addition of Johnathan Burroughs-Cook all contributed in key ways to the school-record 29-win season ending as 2016 Southern Conference Champions and an 11th NCAA Tournament appearance.
 
All those names were gone by the time Paris came on board. His 2018 roster was the youngest in the nation. The 2019 group had just one returning letter winner. The Mocs won 22 games over that period, but as 2020 proved, the culture was taking shape nearly doubling that win total. There's one constant on the roster over this period.
 
"This is what happens when you trust the process, the system and when you have the right players around you," Jean-Baptiste shared looking back over his four years in the program. "It shows what can happen when everybody is on the same page with one another.
 
"Last year (2019), we didn't have true confidence in who we were as a team. That was not part of who we were this season. We came together when it got hard."
 
It led to the 25th 20-win season in program history. You could see it from the start with seven DI non-conference wins for just the fourth time.
 
"It gave us confidence in ourselves and believe we were a good team," Vila said. "Even though there were a couple of losses that shouldn't have happened, we just knew what to do...how to play together. Like at Troy where we down 14 with 17 minutes to go and came back to win by six or eight. Or the game here against Tennessee State where we were down 10 in the first five minutes. Being able to cut leads and get back into games told us a lot about how good we could be.
 
"We had good results and that helped us. It was something we lacked last year."
 
That carried its way through the season. The Mocs steadied after a tough February start to win five of seven down the stretch. Back-to-back wins over UNC Greensboro to end the regular season and open the postseason gave rise to expectations illuminating the program's path with a maturing roster.
 
"It shows what can happen when you have a team with players who have been around each other for awhile," Jean-Baptiste added." When the roster is new, your initial mindset is going to be more individual. When you have a group that's been together, then it's if we are together as a team, we're all moving in the same direction.
 
"That's important for next year because we have more guys who have been together for longer and been through it before. The last three years proved it's easier to win together than individually."
 
Vila was right there as his teammate shared those thoughts. He summed it up succinctly, "You don't play as five guys, you play as one body. You move as one; that's why we were able to have a good season.
 
"I'm very proud (of where we've come)," he continued. "We've been getting better every season from when I got here (Jan. 2018). To go from 10 wins to 20 in two seasons, I'm proud to be one of the members of the team that helped accomplish that…especially at the level of play in the SoCon the last two years."
 
So where's the historical touch? The eight-game win improvement is the fourth-best in school history. The last time with eight or more was the nine-game increase built off the 1997 run to the NCAA Sweet 16. The record of 10 was set in the 1932 and 1959 seasons.
 
Ryan did not hesitate when asked about the step the squad took forward in 2020.
 
"Having a coach at the helm that put together a team that turned the program around should give everyone confidence on what's to come in the future," he noted. "We were a couple of shots away from playing for a championship.
 
"For guys coming back and new players coming in, his experience shows the tools are there to be successful."