Now through the storm, the Lady Vols look toward the home stretch

AP photo by Saul Young / Tennessee guard Jazmine Massengill tries to protect the basketball from Vanderbilt's Jordyn Cambridge during Sunday's game in Knoxville. Massengill, from Chattanooga's Hamilton Heights Christian Academy, had three assists and two blocks as the Lady Vols won 67-63. AP photo by Saul Young / Tennessee guard Jazmine Massengill tries to protect the basketball from Vanderbilt's Jordyn Cambridge during Sunday's game in Knoxville. Massengill, from Chattanooga's Hamilton Heights Christian Academy, had three assists and two blocks as the Lady Vols won 67-63.

By Gene Henley February 24, 2020 3 min read

KNOXVILLE – Tennessee’s women made it through the storm of a tough stretch of basketball games.

The Lady Volunteers won only three of their last nine games, but seven of the nine were against NCAA-tournament-caliber competition. The reprieve during that stretch was two meetings with Vanderbilt, including Sunday’s 67-63 win over the Commodores at Thompson-Boling Arena.

The Lady Vols are 18-9 overall and 8-6 in the Southeastern Conference and are tied with LSU (18-8, 8-6) for sixth in the league heading into the final week of the season. Those two teams split their regular-season matchups, but if they finish in a tie the Tigers would claim the six seed by virtue of their sweep of Texas A&M (22-5, 10-4) and their win over Kentucky (20-6, 9-5).

Tennessee finishes with games against Ole Miss (7-20, 0-14) at home on Thursday and on the road at Auburn (9-16, 3-11). LSU is home against Vanderbilt on Thursday before finishing the schedule at Arkansas (21-6, 9-5). The Lady Vols are a game behind Kentucky and Arkansas but would lose tiebreakers to both based on head-to-head losses.

Tennessee is listed as an 11 seed in ESPN’s latest bracket projection, but coach Kellie Harper isn’t worried about that.