The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball team concluded its regular season with a 68-65 loss to Virginia Military Institute on Sunday at Cameron Hall in Lexington, Va.
With the loss, the Mocs (9-21, 3-15 Southern Conference) fell to the No. 10 seed in this week's conference tournament. They will face Samford in a first-round game at 7:30 p.m. Friday at U.S. Cellular Center in Asheville, N.C.
The Mocs trailed by 17 points in the second half before mounting a comeback, with Makinde London's 3-pointer with 1:24 to play cutting the Keydets' lead to 66-65. But the Mocs - as they did in the season's first meeting with VMI - allowed a pair of offensive rebounds to stretch the Keydets' next possession out.
London then stole the ball from Austin Vereen with 12 seconds remaining, but he turned it over after losing control on a spin move, with the ball hitting off of one of his feet before going out of bounds. The Keydets' Garrett Gilkeson was fouled and hit both free throws, and a London 3-point try at the buzzer glanced off the side rim.
"We have to come out with more energy and intensity at the start of the game so we won't be in these type of situations towards the end of the game," sophomore guard Makale Foreman said on UTC's postgame radio broadcast. "We just have to always play hard and come out with better energy so we can have a better chance at the end of the game.
"We fought hard in the second half to push the lead down. We got some good stops on the defensive end. It all starts with the start of the game."
London and Nat Dixon finished with 16 points each to lead the Mocs, while Makale Foreman added 14. Joshua Phillips had seven points and a career-high 14 rebounds, his fifth double-digit rebounding performance of the season, all in the past nine games. London had one of his more efficient games, shooting 7-for-16 from the field, including 2-for-6 from 3-point range, while Dixon added six rebounds and four assists.
The Mocs played their third consecutive game without starting point guard Rodney Chatman, and things only went downhill when Foreman, who had moved to point guard to replace Chatman, picked up his second foul 3:16 into the game.
The Keydets (9-20, 4-14) turned nine UTC first-half turnovers into 11 points while building a 37-24 halftime lead. Fred Iruafemi had 10 of his 12 points in the first half, and Bubba Parham finished with a team-high 16 points and Vereen scored 11 for VMI, which will face The Citadel in the men's tourney's first game at 5 p.m. Friday.
"You can't play that poorly for most of the game and feel like you are going to have a chance to win," UTC coach Lamont Paris said on the postgame broadcast. "You can't play harder and believe more and do things better because more shots are going in. That is not how our program is going to be built.
"We will not be a program, that since we are scoring, I guess we will play some defense now, too. We are not going to be built that way, and that is what we were doing."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.