Kentucky guard Jaida Roper dribbles around Tennessee guard Zaay Green during Thursday night’s game in Knoxville as Tennessee coach Holly Warlick looks on. The 16th-ranked Wildcats never trailed as they beat the host No. 13 Lady Vols 73-71.KNOXVILLE – Frustration was written all over the faces of the Tennessee women’s basketball team Thursday night.
In a sort of foreign territory, all the Lady Volunteers could do after a second straight two-point loss at home – this time to 16th-ranked Kentucky – was look forward, although the road ahead doesn’t seem much easier.
Tennessee, 13th in the most recent Associated Press poll, hasn’t lost three consecutive games since 1986. The Lady Vols face Georgia at 3 this afternoon in Athens in hopes of preventing that from happening.
That team in 1986, one of three consecutive Lady Vols squads to lose 10 games in a season, won a national championship the following season – the first of eight for coach Pat Summitt.
That’s not to say next season’s Lady Vols will do that. It’s to say that turnarounds are possible. And this Tennessee team needs a turnaround.