KNOXVILLE – There was a time when, during her long recovery from multiple injuries, Tennessee forward Lou Brown questioned if she’d ever play in a basketball game again.
But with 5:22 left in the first quarter of the Lady Volunteers’ exhibition against Carson-Newman on Tuesday night, the 6-foot-3 sixth-year senior entered to a nice ovation from the crowd at Thompson-Boling Arena.
“Yeah, it was pretty surreal,” Brown said. “I didn’t expect that at all from the crowd. But I kind of figure this is a home away from home now, so it just added to that and made my first game back even more special.”
Brown, who is from Melbourne, Australia, was expected to be a key player for the Lady Vols a year ago but was unable to play at all after tearing her ACL during a preseason practice in October 2018. On a team that needed experience and better shooting, she could have provided that after transferring from Washington State, where she started 71 of 95 games and made 80 3-pointers during her career.
The injury set her back, though, and there were multiple times during rehab when she had to slow down because of what were considered “bad days.” Frustration set in at the beginning of this year when she still hadn’t been cleared to run despite the fact her right knee felt better.
“I’m just like, ‘OK, OK, I’m still not doing this,'” she said. “I faced a couple of days where the knee didn’t want to handle it very well, days when my knee was constantly giving me pain and affecting when I was trying to get back and healthy.
“That’s when it got tough on me.”
She’s still not back to 100% and probably won’t be, but opportunities like the one on Tuesday – she had four points and two rebounds in 12 minutes during the 70-44 win over the Lady Eagles – are encouraging to her.
“There were days I didn’t know if I could do this,” Brown told the Times Free Press recently. “It was like, ‘I don’t know if this is something I want to do; I want to go home.’ Injuries are very isolating, but here I am and I look back and the time has really flown. I’m glad I stuck it out.”
Tennessee coach Kellie Harper said the key for Brown, who turned 24 in July and missed most of the 2016-17 season at Washington State due to a foot injury, will be a lot of maintenance by the training staff.
“We are going to make sure that she is feeling good, and if that means that we have to pull her out of a practice or two, we have to manage that this year,” Harper said Tuesday night.
“I thought that she was good. She was really anxious to get out there and get playing. I know it’s not easy for her at times, but she has been very consistent for us by doing what she is asked to do. The little things – boxing out, knowing where she is supposed to be defensively and communicating – she does a lot of things that are very positive for our team, so we want to give her extended minutes on the court. I want to make sure we have her throughout the season, so we are really going to manage that.”
The Lady Vols open their 2019-20 schedule next Tuesday night at East Tennessee State, and while Brown’s role as the season goes on will depend on her health, at this point she’s just happy to have a chance to carve one out.
“I want to be able to knock down 3s,” she said. “It’s been a bit tough coming back and relearning the pace of the game – especially in the SEC – and how quickly I’m going to have to release the ball. I just want to be able to knock down 3s; I think that will be a great thing for this team and a great thing for myself.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.