KNOXVILLE – Evina Westbrook is having a breakout season in her sophomore year.
Westbrook is the first University of Tennessee women’s basketball player to score at least 20 points in four consecutive games since Candace Parker in 2007-08, the season the Lady Volunteers won their most recent of eight national championships. Parker went on to become a No. 1 WNBA draft pick, and the Los Angeles Sparks star is a two-time league MVP who led her team to the championship in 2016, when she was MVP of the title series.
Whether Westbrook is destined for such heights, she is determined to help the Lady Vols reach their goals.
“Scoring four points or scoring 30 points,” Westbrook said, “I’m going to do what my team needs me to do.”
Over her past four games, Westbrook has averaged 25.3 points and 5.8 assists for the ninth-ranked Lady Vols (8-1), who may fall out of the top 10 in next week’s poll. They lost 95-85 at No. 8 Stanford (7-1) on Tuesday and host East Tennessee State (2-12) at 7 p.m. Friday before getting six days off from competition.
Tennessee is still battling to show it can once again consistently beat the top programs, but the 6-foot Westbrook is helping the Lady Vols close the gap. On Tuesday, she scored 29 points to match her collegiate high and collected 10 assists against the Cardinal.
“She’s matured,” Tennessee coach Holly Warlick said. “She’s more confident in what she’s doing and her leadership ability. She’s always been solid with her knowledge of the game. She’s going to continue to get better.”
Westbrook knew she needed to improve after slumping late in her freshman season.
After averaging 10.1 points and shooting 44.3 percent through her first 19 games with the Lady Vols, Westbrook averaged just 6.1 points while shooting 31.2 percent over their final 14 contests of 2017-18. She scored in double figures in just two of their final 12 games.
Westbrook’s mother, Eva, said her daughter had knee problems that limited her effectiveness late last season.
“She’d never been hurt before – we had maybe a little twisted ankle here or there – but she’s never been hurt like this before,” Eva said. “Maybe mentally it took her out a little bit. Her body wasn’t able to do what she was used to – the pain she was playing with and not being able to do certain moves was tough for her.”
Westbrook looks like a different player this year.
She ranks third among Southeastern Conference players in scoring, having averaged 18 points per game, and is fourth in assists (5.3). She has more than doubled her 2017-18 average of 8.4 points per game, thanks in part to a revamped shooting approach.
“I was doing some weird stuff because I was leaning a little bit and I was slinging it,” Westbrook said. “I’d never done that. I think some of my knee problems started causing me to do that last year, so I just changed it.”
Westbrook worked on her shot with Tennessee men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes. Westbrook had been watching the Vols when she and Barnes struck up a conversation that led to a working relationship.
In describing the changes, Westbrook said she made “a couple little tweaks that might not seem major, but it’s a major deal.”
“She gets all the credit for it,” Barnes said. “She’s the one. It wasn’t anything drastic. It was just her wanting to make some changes, and she did. Now their staff, I think, has done a great job making her get the reps up and continue, because she’s going to have to continue to work at it.”
Westbrook has shot 50.4 percent overall and 56 percent (14-of-25) from 3-point range this season after shooting 39 percent from the floor and 31.8 percent (27-of-85) from beyond the arc as a freshman.
The difference is particularly stark at the foul line. Over her past four games, Westbrook has made 24 of her 28 free throws (85.7 percent). She had a collegiate career free-throw percentage of .495 before this stretch.
Westbrook said she has been shooting about 500 free throws per week after practice and credits the work she has done with graduate assistant Nicky Anosike, a teammate of Parker’s on Tennessee’s 2007 and ’08 national championship teams.
All that improvement has enabled Westbrook to meet her own high expectations. She was rated the No. 2 overall prospect in her class by multiple recruiting services when she signed with Tennessee out of Salem, Oregon, where she developed her competitiveness by matching up against her siblings – three older brothers and one younger brother.
“To get a ‘W’ in our house, you have to earn it,” Eva Westbrook said. “The boys weren’t going to let her win just because she wanted to. There were plenty of times she came inside upset because she didn’t beat her brother at one-on-one.
“We have a little guy – he’s 11 – and Evina will block (his) shot and people will kind of laugh and ask, ‘Why are you doing that?’ He’s got to earn his ‘W.'”