Evina Westbrook ready to add to Oregon impact on Lady Vols
KNOXVILLE — At first, the geographical breakdown of Tennessee’s women’s basketball roster actually worked against coach Holly Warlick as she tried to get ESPN’s No. 2-ranked player in the 2017 recruiting class.
It’s not that Evina Westbrook, a guard from Salem, Ore., was afraid to travel 2,500 miles from home to become a Lady Volunteer. The problem was that Jordan Reynolds, Mercedes Russell and Jaime Nared already had done it.
“Having them three be here almost kind of turned me off a little bit,” Westbrook said Thursday. “Like, ‘I don’t want to go to school with three other Oregon girls.’ But I couldn’t look at it like that.”
An official visit left Westbrook feeling that she could see herself walking around Tennessee’s campus, thriving academically and fitting in on a Lady Vols basketball team that begins the 2017-18 season with an exhibition game against Carson-Newman on Nov. 7.
“I could see myself practicing around these girls every day,” Westbrook said. “It just really made my decision. Then I was like, ‘All right, it makes sense why all of us are here.’”
Erik Ainge, who started at quarterback for the Vols from 2004 to 2007, is the only Tennessee football player ever to come from the state of Oregon. The men’s basketball team has never had an Oregonian.
But Westbrook is the fourth player in five years to sign with the Lady Vols from the Beaver State, joining Reynolds (a 2017 graduate) and Nared and Russell, who are the senior leaders on a roster that features more players from Oregon than from Tennessee for the second season in a row.
Warlick said at the Lady Vols annual media day Thursday that she’s yet to start thinking about a starting five for this year. But she said she is not opposed to starting freshmen, and perhaps as many as three. ESPN ranked Tennessee’s recruiting class the best in the nation.
Westbrook is the headliner from the group that also includes wing Rennia Davis, point guard Anastasia Hayes and post player Kasi Kushkituah.
With Reynolds and leading scorer Diamond Deshields departed from last year’s backcourt, Westbrook seems a likely candidate to crack the starting lineup. If she does, all three Oregonians will be on the court together when the season officially begins against East Tennessee State on Nov. 12.
Though all played for the same AAU program — Team Concept — the three are from different cities and insist their decisions to play at Tennessee are truly a coincidence. “I came, but I never came because I knew there was other players from Oregon,” said Nared, who averaged 15.6 points per game last season. “I came because it felt like it was the right place for me to be.” Warlick said the cross-country talent pipeline began when a former Lady Vols assistant reached out to Tennessee’s staff several years ago to suggest they come visit Russell, then a budding high school star. “We got on a plane and went up the next day and saw her,” Warlick said. “Loved her, so we followed her that season. She was on the same AAU team with Jordan Reynolds, and Jaime was just a little kid. That kind of started us off on our connection.”
Then came Westbrook, who had her choice of the nation’s elite programs and a desire to blaze her own path.
“We just stayed at her and I think she realized this is a great place for her, and the opportunity to play with these guys was kind of a bonus,” Warlick said. “I don’t think she came here because of (the Oregon connection). I think she made her decision and I think it was really good for her.”
Westbrook agreed, clarifying that she “wasn’t a package deal with anyone or anything like that.”
“It just so happened for us Oregon girls to be here at the same time,” she said. “But it’s been really fun.”
Contact David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress. com.