Lady Volunteers move forward with 100-60 win over Liberty
KNOXVILLE — Tennessee’s women’s basketball team is at its best when defense fuels the offense.
After a relatively competitive first half Friday afternoon, the Lady Volunteers unleashed their press in full force to cruise to another NCAA tournament home win.
Tennessee freshman Rennia Davis scored 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in her NCAA debut as the third-seeded Lady Vols set postseason offensive records in a 100-60 first-round victory over No. 14 seed Liberty at Thompson-Boling Arena.
The Lady Vols finished the game shooting an NCAA program-best 61.7 percent from the field, where they were 37-for-60, including an impressive 24-of-30 in the second half. They scored 30 points off turnovers and 60 points in the paint.
“We knew we had to pick it up in the second half and be more aggressive, and our press definitely helped,” Tennessee senior guard Jaime Nared said. “It was really just about getting our tempo going and making buckets. That is something we had to adjust, and we did a great job in the second half.”
Tennessee (25-7) will face No. 6 Oregon State in the second round of the Lexington Regional on Sunday with a spot in the Sweet 16 on the line. Oregon State beat No. 11 Western Kentucky 82-58 in Friday’s early game in Knoxville.
The Lady Vols used an offensive outburst in the third quarter — they turned a 36-28 halftime lead into a 74-48 advantage entering the final period — to win their NCAA opener for the ninth straight season and remain
undefeated at home in NCAA play at 57-0.
Liberty (24-10) entered the game ranked No. 7 in the country in scoring defense, having limited opponents to an average of 53.7 points per game, but the Lady Flames couldn’t hold Tennessee’s offense down for a full game. The last time Liberty allowed a team to score 100 points was in 1998, when it lost 102-58 to Tennessee — also in an NCAA tourney game in Knoxville.
Liberty managed to stay close throughout the first half Friday, but the third quarter was another matter. Anastasia Hayes and Nared completed back-to-back three-point plays off turnovers to give the Lady Vols a 50-33 lead with 6:45 on the clock, and Meme Jackson drained a 3-pointer just before the buzzer to push the edge to 26 points.
“I told them at halftime I thought we were settling,” Tennessee coach Holly Warlick said. “We are a really good team when we get the ball in the paint. We move the ball, we cut harder, we set screens. We stepped up our defense, and our defense always leads to us getting easy baskets and it kind of gets us hyped.”
Davis led seven Tennessee players who scored in double figures. That group included Cheridene Green, who came off the bench for 15 points and 12 rebounds.
Lela Sellers led Liberty with 13 points, and Big South Conference player of the year Keyen Green scored 10, all in the second half.
“They only missed six shots in the second half, and part of that is turning the ball over, and they were getting runouts and layups off that,” Liberty coach Carey Green said. “We handled it fairly well first half. The second half, the turnovers turned into touchdowns.”
Led by Green, Tennessee’s bench produced 39 points. The redshirt junior forward from London scored a team-high 10 points in the first half.
“Cheridene, she has that impact on us,” Warlick said. “At the SEC (tournament), I asked her why she wasn’t her usual self and she said, ‘You know what, I was nervous.’ It’s the first time she’d been in tournament play with a big crowd, and probably that (experience) helped her in this game.”