When the Tennessee Lady Volunteers took shots during Thursday night’s game at Arkansas, they had success.
They didn’t do that for a half, though, and it dug a hole they were unable to climb out of on their way to an 83-75 loss to the 22nd-ranked Razorbacks at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.
Tennessee (17-9, 7-6 Southeastern Conference), which is on a five-game losing streak, has three regular-season games remaining before the SEC tournament begins March 4 in Greenville, South Carolina. The Lady Vols return to competition when they host Vanderbilt at noon Sunday at Thompson-Boling Arena. After that is another home game next Thursday against Ole Miss before the regular-season finale at Auburn on March 1.
The Lady Vols turned the ball over 16 times in the first half Thursday, yet still found themselves down just 33-25 at the break. They shot 51% from the field in the final 20 minutes and cut the turnovers down to seven in that stretch, but they weren’t able to get stops against the small-ball lineup of the Razorbacks (21-5, 9-4), who were led by guards Amber Ramirez (29 points, 5-for-9 from 3-point range) and Alexis Tolefree (22 points, seven rebounds, three assists).
The Lady Vols, who trailed by 16 with 9:02 to play, made 11 of their final 19 shots to cut their deficit to 79-75 on a Rennia Davis 3-pointer with 15 seconds remaining. Tennessee fouled, and Ramirez knocked down a pair of free throws to put the game away.
Rae Burrell finished with a team-high 21 points for Tennessee, with all but two coming in the second half and 15 coming in the fourth quarter. She added nine rebounds and three assists but had five turnovers. Davis had 18 points, eight rebounds and three assists, and although Jordan Horston finished with nine points, six rebounds and four assists, she also had a game-high six turnovers.
Freshman guard Jessie Rennie knocked down a trio of 3s for nine points.
“We didn’t get enough stops,” coach Kellie Harper said during her postgame interview on the Lady Vol Network. “We were needing some back-to-back stops, and we didn’t get them. I didn’t love our first half. I don’t think we were tough enough in the first half. We got some balls knocked out of our hands, missed some layups, made too many turnovers.
“Obviously we came out and had some fight left in us in the second half and got ourselves in striking distance. We were scoring enough, we just could not get stops.”
THURSDAY’S STAR
Tennessee did a good job of bottling up Arkansas guard Chelsea Dungee – who entered the game averaging a team-leading 18.1 points per game but was held to 16 – BUT never really had an answer for Ramirez or Tolefree. The guards combined to take 23 3-pointers, making nine, and combined for 51 points.
STANDOUT STAT
It comes as no surprise that against a guard-heavy team like the Razorbacks, the Lady Vols’ turnovers came back to haunt them. As much as the hosts’ 11 3s hurt, the same could be said for the 23 Tennessee turnovers that were turned into 29 points, because the Lady Vols defended well enough in the half-court game to hang around.
TURNING POINT
At a time when Tennessee should have been settling into the game, it fell apart in a second quarter, making just four of 13 shots while turning the ball over nine times. Compound that with some lackluster effort getting back on defense after turnovers, and Tennessee was lucky to be down only eight points at the half.
WHAT IT MEANS
NCAA tournament bubble, meet Tennessee. The Lady Vols will finish the regular season with just one quality win and are now in serious danger of needing to play their way into the bracket with a win or two in the SEC tournament. There’s no fixing the team’s problems at this point; all Harper and her staff can do is try their best to put a bandage on to mask the team’s offensive deficiencies.
QUOTABLE
Harper on her players’ motivation with the knowledge they will likely not finish higher than seventh in the SEC: “It’s a foreign concept for me. Whenever I go out to play or whenever we’re coaching, we’re playing to win. I don’t need any motivation. I don’t need a carrot dangled out there in front of me because I want to win so bad, so I hope we have some players like that. Also, you’re still playing for seeding. You’re playing for your season, and you have to go out, play hard and find a way to win. Hopefully they’ve got more in them and don’t have to have a carrot dangled in front of them.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.