Lady Vols top Tigers, prepare for Gamecocks
With a hot start by Auburn threatening to put a damper on senior day for the Tennessee women’s basketball team, some sharp long-range shooting by junior Tess Darby helped the Lady Volunteers get right back in it.
Jasmine Powell — the point guard was one of the seven players honored during the pregame ceremony at Thompson-Boling Arena — then helped the Lady Vols settle down in the second half. And finally, the senior dynamic duo of Jordan Horston and Rickea Jackson closed the deal on an 83-76 Southeastern Conference victory in front of 9,039.
All in all, not a bad Sunday afternoon in Knoxville for coach Kellie Harper’s crew — and, coming against a physical bunch of Tigers, perhaps pretty good preparation for Thursday’s visit from top-ranked South Carolina.
“I think any time you are playing in the SEC, you have to expect a physical game.
We expected it today,” Harper said during her postgame news conference. “Physical in the paint, physical on the perimeter. You don’t have the size today that you’ll see on Thursday in terms of what you’re going to see in the paint, but it was a physical game, it was challenging.
“I think as a team we have to grow from this and make sure we’re rising to the occasion. And again, just proud we were able to withstand that.”
The Lady Vols (20-9, 12-2), third in the SEC standings behind South Carolina (27-0, 14-0) and No. 5 LSU (25-1, 13-1), will certainly have the chance to rise to meet a challenge when the unbeaten Gamecocks are at ThompsonBoling Arena for a 7 p.m. tipoff Thursday. Considering the visitors will be coming off Sunday’s 64-57 overtime win at Ole Miss, they’re not likely to be caught off guard.
Apparently, neither was Tennessee against Auburn (14-12, 4-10) — after the
game, more than one Lady Vol mentioned a desire to avenge last season’s road loss to the Tigers — but the visitors’ 64% shooting in the first quarter and an 11-0 run allowed them to end the period with a 24-20 lead.
Tennessee, though, scored the final two points of the first quarter and the first 11 of the second went into halftime up 39-34, with plenty of credit due to Darby, who was 4-for-5 from 3-point range in the first 20 minutes. She finished with 17 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the field, including 5-for-6 behind the arc, plus five rebounds and three steals.
“When we were a little stagnant, a little stale there in the first half, she was able to put some points on the board for us,” Harper said. “My only complaint is I wish we’d have found her about three more times. … I thought she was open a couple more times and we just missed her.”
Harper said Darby’s success forced Auburn defenders to stick with her, opening up lanes for the Lady Vols to attack in the second half. Not that the Tigers went away, even after Darby’s final 3 put Tennessee up by eight a little more than three minutes into the third quarter.
Auburn used a 9-2 run to go ahead 51-50 before Harper had seen enough and, at the 4:06 mark, called what turned out to be “an animated timeout,” as she later described it, to “get after” her team.
“It fired us up for sure,” Horston said, “but that’s what we needed, just telling us that we’ve got to play, just play.”
They did, with Jackson scoring three straight baskets in the span of a minute and a half, and Powell then hitting two free throws for a 58-51 lead. Auburn scored the next five points, but Powell hit two more free throws, and it was 60-56 after three quarters.
In the fourth, when Auburn got within three halfway through but never that close again, Horston and Jackson combined for 22 of Tennessee’s 23 points.
Jackson finished with 27 points, one short of her season high, on 12-for-15 shooting, going 3-for-6 from long range. Horston scored 19 with eight rebounds, and Jillian Hollingshead had eight points and seven rebounds.
Powell had a gamehigh eight assists — and a calming presence whenever things got hectic.
“She had a really good command of what we needed to be doing, where we needed to get the ball and the pace,” Harper said, “so I thought her poise really helped our team.”
Auburn was led by Honesty Scott-Grayson’s 23 points, and she was joined in double figures by Aicha Coulibaly (15), Romi Levy (10) and Sania Wells (10), who had six assists.
The Lady Vols, who have often dominated opponents this season in the battle for rebounds, finished with 34, just three more than the Tigers, and had just nine offensive, two fewer than Auburn. Tennessee, though, was efficient with its offense, shooting 56% both from the field (28-for-50) and 3-point range (5-for-9).
The hosts also converted 22 of their 32 free throws. Auburn was 14-for-19 at the line.
After facing South Carolina, Tennessee will visit Kentucky next Sunday to close the regular season. The SEC tournament begins March 1 in Greenville, South Carolina.