By ANDREW SIMONSON
HOMEWOOD – Wednesday, Feb. 12 started as a golden opportunity for the Samford Bulldogs to break free from a three-way tie atop the SoCon with the UNC-Greensboro Spartans and the Chattanooga Mocs.
Instead, they broke free in the opposite direction.
Samford fell to Chattanooga 82-68 to drop its second-straight game and third in the last five as a whiteout crowd in the Pete Hanna Center saw the Bulldogs lose at home for the second time in the past two seasons.
As a result of the win, the Mocs remained in a tie for first place in the SoCon while Samford dropped all the way to third, going a game back with five games left in conference play.
“We’ve got to play better,” Samford coach Bucky McMillan said postgame. “Our players are not playing right now as confident as they were a couple of weeks ago. That’s the biggest thing that I see is we’re just not playing confident. We’re playing a little tired, we’ve got to get that corrected. It’s a long season, I told these guys that.”
The Bulldogs got off to a disastrous start to the game as they were held scoreless during the first 4:31 of the contest. During that stretch, the Mocs struggled to score from the field as well, scoring five of their first nine points from the free throw line. A 3-point play with 15:50 left forced McMillan to regroup after the first media timeout.
Samford started to find success on the offensive end after the stoppage. Riley Allenspach got a physical layup to put the Bulldogs on the board. After it was answered on the other end with a Chattanooga basket, he and Wells hit back-to-back 3-pointers over the next minute to slash the deficit to 11-8.
However, another Mocs and-1 followed by an acrobatic layup put the visitors up eight, and they held that lead through a mostly quiet scoring stretch. They extended it to 12 off a 7-2 run out of the under-eight media timeout before McMillan called timeout trailing 26-14. The hole only deepened for the Bulldogs in the next two minutes. While Jaden Brownell made a pair of free throws to make it a 10-point game again, Chattanooga scored the next five points to take a 31-16 lead. That forced another Samford timeout, but this time, the Bulldogs offense responded well.
Samford went on a 10-0 run anchored by key baskets from Rylan Jones and Josh Holloway. The Bulldogs also forced multiple steals and capitalized on the fast break, including off an Allenspach transition layup to slash the deficit to 31-46 and make the Mocs call a timeout with 1:42 remaining.
Chattanooga scored the next five points out of the break to restore a 36-26 lead going into halftime.
The second half started at a breakneck speed as the teams traded fast-break points. Samford tried to swing the momentum in its favor with big baskets but couldn’t stop the Mocs from quickly scoring on the other end. Chattanooga led by as much as 15 during the opening minutes of the quarter before Jones cut it to 10 off a 3-pointer. The Mocs immediately answered with a 3-pointer of its own to take a 54-31 lead into the under-16.
That media timeout slowed down the pace on both sides of the ball, but Samford couldn’t get much offense going to take advantage of the opportunities created by the defense. The tide started to change with a 6-1 Bulldogs run out of the under-12 media timeout, but the momentum was briefly halted by a 4-point play from Huff to put Chattanooga up 61-51 with 10:19 to go.
Samford couldn’t get a similar call to fall its way when Rylan Jones went down at the other end, but it brushed off the decision and went on a quick 6-0 run. Jones and Holloway capped the run with fast-break layups to electrify the crowd, cut the deficit to 61-57 and force a Mocs timeout with 9:19 remaining.
However, just like the previous runs, the stoppage brought the Bulldogs’ momentum to a screeching halt. Chattanooga kept Samford scoreless for the next 3:51 and used that defensive effort to take a double-digit lead and put the game away for good. Holloway tied for the game-high with 18 points to go with four assists. Jones had 14 points and three assists and Allenspach rounded out the double-digit scorers with 11 points and six rebounds.
Elsewhere, Walls stuffed the stat sheet with five points, five rebounds and five steals and Larry Olayinka earned three blocks on defense. After the game, McMillan said that the Bulldogs offensive woes kept them from winning as they shot just 38.3 percent from the field and 20 percent from behind the arc. He said the shots not falling wound up digging them a hole and affecting multiple aspects of their game.
“As much as I felt like we went up there in the game up there, we really had an
energy and a tenacity to us, we didn’t have it tonight,” McMillan said. “And a lot of
times when you’re not making shots, it affects your defense, it’s just hard to get
the energy going, and we just couldn’t get over that hump.”
While McMillan gave a lot of credit to the Mocs for winning their matchups, he said his players were mentally fatigued to the point where they allowed plays like backdoor cuts that they practiced guarding all week. Despite the recent struggles though, he still believes in his players and hopes that they will rediscover that belief in themselves to right the ship.
“I’ve got confidence in our team,” McMillan said. “They’ve got to find the
confidence within themselves as individual players at times. We just didn’t play with that confidence you’ve got to have.” Samford will have a chance to regain that confidence on the road at the Wofford Terriers on Saturday, Feb. 18 at 1 p.m. ahead of the Bulldogs’ final two home games of the year against Furman on Wednesday, Feb. 19 at 6:30 p.m. and Western Carolina on Saturday, Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. Only two chances remain to watch the Samford Bulldogs at home this season.
This article was written by Andrew Simonson. Follow his other work on X and Instagram
@andrewtsimonson.