Athlon Gives Mocs Football Preseason Top 15 Ranking
(gomocs.com) CHATTANOOGA—Athlon put out its preseason Top 25 rankings out Monday and the Southern Conference was well-represented with the Chattanooga Mocs getting the league’s top billing at No. 12. The comes after HERO Sports put the Mocs at 16 last month.
UTC at 12 was followed by Mercer at No. 17. ETSU was noted right behind the Bears at 18 with Furman listed among the five more to watch.
“I’m not too excited talking about what might happen,” Coach Rusty Wright said. “It’s always good to be thought well of in the preseason, I promise you that. But there are a bunch of Saturdays coming up that are going to prove who we are, one way or the other.
“I can tell you I’m excited to work with this group. What I like most is we have good people who this community will like to rally behind.”
It’s been a quiet stretch that is turning to the bustling of returning to campus. May saw graduation and trips home, however, June is when student-athletes return for summer session and to begin the good work towards 2022.
HERO Sports is also doing a countdown of the best players who were a jersey number going from 99-to-0 (first kickoff of 2022). Last Friday, June 3, No. 90 came up and to no one’s surprise from Chattanooga to Valdosta to Timbuktu, All-America defensive lineman Devonnsha Maxwell was the feature player.
You can read the write up here. Maxwell has eyes on the Southern Conference record for career sacks as well as all the Chattanooga ones. He fell 1.5 shy of Keionta Davis’ (13.5, 2015) season mark with 12 a year ago. That’s one thing he’d like to change in 2022.
Maxwell has 29.5 career sacks. That’s 7.5 off the school-record 37.0 by Davis Tull (2011-14). Tull also holds the league’s top number.
