Joshua Phillips scored a career-high 14 points in his Chattanooga Mocs debut aiding a 95-60 win over Tennessee Wesleyan. He was one of six in double digits.
David Jean-Baptiste led all scorers with 18 points to go with seven rebounds and six assists. James Lewis, Jr., added 13 points and eight rebounds, while Nat Dixon and Duane Moss each scored 11. Makale Foreman tallied 10. Johnson Decembre paced the Bulldogs with 14.
Antoine Williams' layup made it a three-point game, 20-17, with 9:43 to go in the first half.
The Mocs surged from there out-scoring their guests 23-4 the rest of the first half.
Back-to-back three-pointers by Jean-Baptiste and Dixon got the run started. Two Jean-Baptiste free throws got the margin into double digits before Dixon's triple at 6:34 marked 11 unanswered as the Mocs held the Bulldogs without a point for more than four-and-a-half minutes.
Williams ended the drought with two free throws at the five-minute mark. Chattanooga kept the pressure on from both the charity stripe and around the basket. Joshua Phillips put an exclamation point on the half with a slam with nine seconds left until the break on a nice feed from Jean-Baptiste.
"We had a hard time getting ourselves going early on,” coach Lamont Paris said. “I don't know what that was attributed to, but I felt the second half we came out with that first group more of the way we want to play. I feel like we were representing ourselves as how we want to be as a team."
It was all Mocs from there. The lead topped 30 for good on a Dixon triple at 13:03. Forty was exceeded five minutes later on Lewis, Jr.’s three-point play at 8:29, 85-44. The largest margin was 45 reached four times. The latest was on a Jean-Baptiste tally with 4:08 to play.
Jean-Baptiste was forward-thinking after the contest.
"It starts with practice tomorrow,” noting the next step in the season. “The mindset is to get back in game speed. We're going to make mistakes, but we'll fight through it and keep playing hard."
UTC had a season-high 23 assists along with a +19 margin on the boards. Defensively, it held Tennessee Wesleyan to 33.3 percent shooting (21-63), 15.0 percent (3-15) from 3pt range.
The Mocs get back to road life this Tuesday at Akron. Tipoff is at 7 p.m., on ESPN3. The squad returns to Chattanooga next Saturday, Dec. 2, hosting a doubleheader vs. UT Martin. The ladies tipoff at 2 p.m., with the men meeting at 5 p.m.