The Tennessee women’s basketball team has had some Jekyll moments this season, and certainly some Hyde moments.
For the Lady Volunteers to continue their season beyond Saturday, Jekyll will have to make an appearance.
Tennessee (19-12) faces UCLA (20-12) in the first round of the NCAA tournament in College Park, Maryland, with tipoff set for 1 p.m. and ESPN2 televising the game. The Lady Vols are the No. 11 seed in the Albany Region, with the Bruins seeded sixth.
This season for the Lady Vols has been one of good – five wins over teams ranked in the top 50 in Rating Percentage Index – and bad, with six consecutive losses at midseason and the program’s first-ever home loss to Vanderbilt. Such is expected for a team with seven freshmen or sophomores in the rotation, but it’s not the expectation for a program with the prestigious history of Tennessee.
“It is hard. It is really hard,” Tennessee coach Holly Warlick said recently. “When you are in practice and see what they can do, how good they can be, and it fades in and out, it is really difficult. We just have to have a little bit more consistency in their leadership, but we are young.
“We have to continue to grow, and these kids are young, but they are mature now because they have been playing this whole year. They have had to grow up in a hurry.”
The tournament provides a fresh start of sorts, and against an opponent that’s similar to the Lady Vols in a lot of ways, the difference in the game could be something that Tennessee hasn’t done well this season: Protect the basketball.
The Lady Vols turn the ball over an average of nearly 16 times a game, compared to 13.3 for UCLA. When Warlick speaks of consistency, some of that is about doing the right things during a game and making better decisions with the ball. When Tennessee has won, it typically has done that. When it has lost, it hasn’t.
So how do the Lady Vols establish that consistency? With effort, sophomore point guard Evina Westbrook said.
“I think just come out and give your all,” Westbrook said. “Any game can be your last at this point. The tournament is harder for our younger players to understand that, but they are mature enough to know to go out there and give it all they’ve got.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.