New-look Lady Vols leave for European trip
KNOXVILLE — Virtually a new team led by a new coach.
What better way for the University of Tennessee women’s basketball program to bond than a 10-day trip to Europe?
The Lady Volunteers left Sunday for their trip to the Netherlands, Belgium and France, where they will play three games while trying to break in a number of new players who either weren’t on the roster last year or weren’t able to play. In addition, it’s the unofficial debut of new head coach Kellie Harper, who replaced Holly Warlick in April.
Tennessee’s first game is on Aug. 8 in the Netherlands. While overseas, the Lady Vols will visit the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum, the Zaanse Schans, Amsterdam canal boats and Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands and take tours of the cities of Ghent and Bruges in Belgium and visits to the beaches of Normandy, the Louvre, Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower and River Seine in France.
Harper’s first team will have six new faces and will be replacing four of the top six scorers from last season’s 19-12 roster. Guard Meme Jackson and forward Cheridene Green graduated, while sophomore guard Evina Westbrook transferred to Connecticut and forward Mimi Collins went to Maryland.
“It’s a great opportunity for chemistry,” Harper said recently. “It’s a great opportunity for the players to know the staff better, but also get fired up for the future and what that’s going to look like.”
How it’s going to look will be dependent on the program’s most experienced player, junior Rennia Davis. The two-year starter at forward averaged 14.9 points and 7.7 rebounds per game during the tumultuous last season in which the program lost six consecutive games for the first time in school history.
She and sophomore Zaay Green are the only players with experience in Tennessee uniforms. Green averaged 9.6 points and 4.0 rebounds per game last season. Senior Lou Brown, who was a graduate transfer from Washington State last season, missed the year after a knee injury and was granted a sixth season of eligibility. At 6-foot-3, she will provide an inside as well as an outside presence for the team.
The Lady Vols brought in five newcomers, led by guard Jordan Horston, but this is undoubtedly Davis’ team, as she was looked upon as a leader throughout last season’s issues.
“Last year I was working towards being a better leader, which explains my ups and downs,” Davis said recently. “This year I will have a year of experience and it will be able to help me; I learned to not let certain stuff get to me mentally.
“I think that was a big problem last year.”
But last year isn’t talked about much. Under Harper, it’s a new regime and the past isn’t being discussed often. It’s about this season, a journey that begins in earnest this week. Harper admitted that she hasn’t put much of her system in yet but has done enough that she believes the team will be competitive once the players step on the floor.
Plus, the time together for a team relatively unfamiliar with each other outside of the past couple of months should be good.
“It’s 10 days and we’re together in a foreign country,” she said. “I’m hopeful that being around each other in a different environment is something that will be a positive for us. They’re so used to being here on campus, in a gym or in a dorm with each other.
“This is a new light. We’re going to make some memories.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.