2023-24 Chattanooga Mocs Men's Basketball
Game 23 – Western Carolina
February 3 – McKenzie Arena – Chattanooga, Tenn.
Postgame Quotes
 
Dan Earl, Head Coach
Overall thoughts on 78-56 loss to Samford.
"Congratulations to Samford, I thought they played a really hard and a well-played game. I just talked to the guys and apologized to them. That first half in particular was kind of my fault. We knew they were going to play some zone and then play some man and just kept mixing up defenses and we didn't keep in simple enough. We were over-thinking and got a little stagnant and just not as effective as we could be offensively. That messed with us. I was proud of the guys for fighting back and I appreciate the crowd for putting a lot of energy into the building in the second half. We cut it to eight and had a couple chances to cut it even lower with decent shots, but we got a little bit quick in the second half."

"Overall my goal is to learn from this. There's a lot of basketball left to be played and then the Southern Conference Tournament as well. We're going to stick together, learn from it and get better."

On where the team needs to improve.
"Really in all facets of the game. This was a little bit different of a game in that their zone, their man, they way they mixed things up and then pressing. They just don't allow you to run your stuff, they make you be ball players, if you will. We were a little tentative and over-thinking things where sometimes the shot clock was running down, sometimes we had the ball too far over on the sideline and they trapped us. It was a choppy game at best for us offensively in the first half. We gotta do a better job defensively as well. They were driving downhill a bunch of the first half. They're a good team, we just have to get better on the whole at every facet. Against Samford, we just have to get on the same page more. We'll do a better job at that going forward."
 
Honor Huff, So.-G
On his initial thoughts of the game after looking at the box score.
"Offensive rebounds, giving up 11 obviously isn't ideal. Once we started making our run in the second half, we gave up a couple second chance points that kind of extended their lead in the second half. Really I'm just looking at my negatives and how I can improve my game. We had a couple turnovers and we've gotta tighten up on those. We had more turnovers than assists and you never want that to happen."

On UTC's run to open the second and how it got away from them in the long run.
"We just kind of got sped up and excited at that point, especially because of me. Once we got started I took a deep three that was ill-advised. I'd say it was a heat check but it really wasn't. Once we got it going we should've just calmed it down and ran our sets like we were doing before to get there. I don't think we executed that very well. We just felt like we needed to play hero ball at the other end, everybody. That hurt us when we were trying to make our run. Just getting too excited, taking ill-advised shots and not settling down when it was time for us to make our run."