Tennessee’s Evina Westbrook (2) tries to block a shot by Auburn’s Janiah McKay during last Thursday’s game in Knoxville. Tennessee won 73-62.KNOXVILLE – During a six-game losing streak this season, Tennessee women’s basketball coach Holly Warlick implored her players to “lean on each other.”
In time, it appeared they listened – and now they appear to be a far better team.
The Lady Volunteers (17-8, 6-6 Southeastern Conference) head into Thursday’s 9 p.m. EST matchup against No. 21 Texas A&M (19-6, 8-4) in College Station looking for their sixth win in seven games. A Tennessee victory would result in its second three-game winning streak this calendar year, with only a 28-point loss at Mississippi State splitting up the streaks.
Of the 10 active players on Tennessee’s roster, three are sophomores and four are freshmen. With the Lady Vols’ past two recruiting classes rated among the nation’s best, most of those underclassmen were not far removed from being high school stars who often had the ball, especially in big moments – but they had to learn to be part of a system in which no shot was guaranteed.
It appeared learning to win together meant first learning to play together.
“This team is continuing to get experience, continuing to grow,” Warlick said Wednesday. “I feel good about it. We’re past the point of ‘I’ve got to get mine,’ not that we were ever there. There’s something about learning to play with each other, and we’ve learned to play with each other.”
In the Lady Vols’ two most recent wins, against Auburn and Missouri – both are currently projected to make the NCAA tournament next month – they took different paths to victory. Tennessee needed a big third-quarter run to assume control against Auburn and win 73-62 last Thursday in Knoxville. On Sunday at Missouri, the Lady Vols overcame early foul trouble to hang tight, using a pair of Rennia Davis free throws in the final minute that proved to be the difference in a 62-60 win.
It’s obviously been a trying regular season for Warlick and the Lady Vols. The losing streak was the program’s longest in nearly 50 years, and it put Tennessee in serious jeopardy of not being selected for the NCAA tournament for the first time ever. That all appears to be in the rear-view mirror, because Tennessee has solidified its position and has been projected as a No. 9 seed for the tournament. The Lady Vols have seven wins against projected NCAA tournament teams, including a season-series sweep of Auburn.
Tennessee’s next two games are also against projected NCAA tournament teams – after visiting the Aggies, the Lady Vols host South Carolina on Sunday. That means they will have two more chances to enhance their résumé.
But more importantly, they’ll have two more chances to get better.
“No coach wants to lose, but if you do lose, you want to learn from it,” Warlick said. “We did, and we understood that we needed each other. They have a really strong bond now. It’s growing pains; when you lose, you start to point fingers and question a lot of what you do, but these kids came together and understood they needed each other, and the Missouri game was proof of that. Different people scored, and we got big stops down the stretch.
“That was team defense.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.