Lady Mocs Play Demanding Schedule With Home Games With Lady Vols and Stanford

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The UTC women’s basketball schedule, the first compiled under second-year head coach Jim Foster, is now complete. It features three Top 10 teams from the 2013-14 season including two Final Four participants, three tournaments and a revamped Southern Conference slate.

The season begins at home with the Tip-Off Tournament. The event will stretch over three days with the Mocs hosting Villanova in the opening game and South Florida in the finale. Chattanooga will host a second tournament just before the holiday break in December. Tennessee Tech, North Carolina A&T and Morgan State will take part in the Christmas Classic. The third tournament will see the Mocs travel to San Antonio for the UTSA Holiday Classic between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

The non-conference slate will see many new teams including a road trip to Butler and Notre Dame in mid-November before a return trip home to host instate foes Austin Peay and nationally-ranked Tennessee in the week before Thanksgiving.

The Irish went undefeated last year before falling to top-ranked Connecticut in the National Championship Game. Tennessee posted a 29-6 overall mark and claimed the SEC Tournament title and advanced to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16.

December will start with three straight road games to Arkansas State, Belmont and UT-Martin. This will be the first meeting between the Mocs and Skyhawks since the two faced off in the Cincinnati Bearcat Invitational in 1997. It was Chattanooga’s lone loss to its sister school.

Stanford, a Final Four team, will make its first appearance in the Scenic City in mid-December leading into the Christmas Classic. Following a short Christmas break, the Mocs will take on SIU Edwardsville and South Dakota in San Antonio.

Chattanooga will close out the non-conference schedule with a trip to Harvard. The Crimson finished the season ranked 18^th, two spots behind UT-Martin in the CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major Top 25 Coaches Poll.

The Southern Conference will have a new look with the departure of four teams from the league and only two women’s teams added in. Appalachian State and Georgia Southern became members of the Sun Belt Conference while Davidson departed for the Atlantic 10 and Elon joined former SoCon member College of Charleston in the Colonial Athletic Association.

East Tennessee State returns to the league after a nine-year absence. In the last meeting between the two team in SoCon play, the Bucs knocked UTC out of the conference tournament hosted by the Mocs. Since that time, Chattanooga holds a 4-2 advantage and won the last two.

Also joining the league is Mercer. The Bears finished sixth in the A-Sun standings while ETSU was seventh.