Thursday, November 13, 2014

Hiwassee Preview: Chaos 2.0

Chaos 2.0 is finally here.

In what may well be the most anticipated Chattanooga basketball season since 1997, the Mocs are ready to take the floor on opening night against the NCCAA's Hiwassee Tigers. The Mocs are looking to impress the home crowd.

Hiwassee has a brand new head coach in Will Raby. The Tigers are winless so far this year, but played their best game of the year against Reinhardt this week. Jeulian High is returning to Chattanooga, as the former Brainerd High School star. Against Tennessee Wesleyan (one game where the Tigers stats were available on-line), he scored six points and got two rebounds.

Three players against Tennessee Wesleyan scored in double figures. Anthony Calloway scored ten points and made one of the two three pointers the team made. Brandon Carpenter led the team with twelve points and made the other three pointer off the bench. Jacob Elliott also scored ten points on 5 of 11 shooting from the floor.

Elliott collected four offensive rebounds and five for the game. Carpenter lead the team with seven rebounds. Aario Johnson scored six points and had six rebounds.

In that game, both teams collected 43 rebounds. Hiwassee came up with sixteen offensive rebounds and Tennessee Wesleyan had ten offensive rebounds. The Tigers made just 2 of 16 from three point range, 8 of 16 from the free throw line and just 26 of 70 from the floor. They turned the ball over 26 times.

Tennessee Wesleyan beat Hiwassee 90-62 that day.

The Mocs will count on their pressure defense to force a bunch of turnovers. The Tigers also don't seem to be a great shooting team. The Mocs defense should be able to dominate the day against the Tigers.

The Mocs projected starting lineup is Greg Pryor, Casey Jones, Tre McLean, Chuck Ester and Justin Tuoyo. But I would expect all of the Mocs to play a bunch of minutes in this one and the Mocs will need to rest up for Sunday's big step up in competition against Wisconsin.

McLean and Jones will be key scorers for the Mocs. Tuoyo should be a major force on the defensive end. I am really excited to see Tuoyo play and see what he looks like. McLean, Ester and Duke Ethridge are also new players that I am really looking forward to seeing.

The Mocs will play great defense, but I'm not sure how well that will look offensively. This game should be an easy win for the Mocs as long as they come out focused early and often. This should be a good night for Mocs fans. Mocs 73, Tigers 44.

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