Every year when the NCAA basketball tournament rolls around, it seems that some team, generally an underdog, catches the nation’s fancy. That team in 1997 was Chattanooga. That year, they became only the second team in tournament history to be a fourteenth seed and advance to the “Sweet 16.” After a slow start at the beginning of the 1996-1997 season, UT-C went on to win the Southern Conference tournament. Still, they could muster only a number fourteen seed in the NCAA tournament, meaning they would have to play a number three seed, often an omen of an early ouster. The Mocs, however, stunned Georgia and then beat Illinois, and basketball fans across the country began to adopt this team as their own. They were a true hodgepodge of players that included two walk-ons, Wes Moore from Chattanooga and Isaac Conner from Knoxville; a hometown player in Johnny Taylor; and three junior college players in Willie Young, Chris Mims, and Marquis Collier. UT-C’s march would end in the “Sweet 16” with a narrow loss to Providence. The Mocs finished 24-11 on the season, winning nineteen of their last twenty-three games. Johnny Taylor was named Southern Conference Player of the Year and was taken in the first round of the NBA draft by the Orlando Magic. Truly a storybook year for an underdog team that toppled a few Goliaths in 1997 and put the name “University of Tennessee at Chattanooga” on the basketball map.
