KNOXVILLE – Is Tennessee going to be left out of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament for the first time?
Probably not, but that doesn’t mean the Lady Volunteers, who lost 86-65 to Kentucky in a Southeastern Conference tournament quarterfinal Friday night, won’t have to sweat between now and the March 16 selection show in which the 64-team field is fully revealed.
Eight-time national champion Tennessee is the only program that never has missed the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, which was held for the first time in 1982. That streak was in some jeopardy just last season, when the Lady Vols lost six consecutive games – the worst skid in program history – and were 19-12 after the regular season and the SEC tournament before getting in as a No. 11 seed and losing to UCLA in the NCAA’s first round.
This season’s Lady Vols, who were seeded sixth at the SEC tourney, are 21-10 after the loss to the 16th-ranked, third-seeded Wildcats in Greenville, South Carolina.
Though the record is better at this point this year, last season’s Tennessee team had some quality wins. These Lady Vols don’t, with the lone exception a 63-58 home victory over LSU on Jan. 26. The Tigers were 36th in the final Rating Percentage Index, which measures a team’s record relative to the schedule it has played and is an evaluation tool for the committee that selects teams for the NCAA field.
Tennessee’s second-best win? Over Georgia, which at 60 in the RPI is three spots higher than Tennessee. Alabama is the only other team the Lady Vols have played that appears in the top 100, with the next highest-ranked team Auburn, and Tennessee needed the Tigers to miss a last-second free throw so it could hold on for the win last Sunday. Georgia (17-14) and LSU (20-10) joined Tennessee in exiting Greenville with lopsided losses Friday, a day after Auburn (11-18) did the same.
What this Tennessee team boasts, though, is no bad losses. The Lady Vols’ worst is to Texas, which is 41 in the RPI. South Carolina (1), Connecticut (6), Stanford (7), Mississippi State (13), Texas A&M (17), Kentucky (23) twice, Arkansas (31) and LSU (36) are the other teams to beat Tennessee this season.
“It’s going to be a very interesting next nine days for the Lady Vols,” ESPN women’s basketball “bracketologist” Charlie Creme said during a Friday broadcast. “I have them now in as the first team above the last four in, which leaves them susceptible to some upsets around the country next week and those conference tournaments, and the teams that I have just below Tennessee still have games to play, so they can elevate as well.
“I’m not guaranteeing them a spot. They’re in right now, but there’s so much more basketball to be played, and the unfortunate part is Tennessee will not be playing in any of that.”
The Lady Vols did win one SEC tournament game, beating Missouri 64-51 in Thursday’s second round behind the strength of a 15-0 run in the third quarter. It wasn’t an awe-inspiring game by any means, but Tennessee found a way to get it done against a lower-tier team, something that has happened throughout former Lady Vols point guard Kellie Harper’s first season as coach.
Will it be enough? Should it be enough?
At least one voice inside the Lady Vols’ camp thinks so.
“I do,” assistant Jon Harper, Kellie’s husband, said Friday on the Lady Vol Network. “I think it’s hard to win all the games you’re supposed to win, whatever that means, but we won every game we’re supposed to win. We don’t have any huge victories over a top-ranked team, but we were able to win all the games that we were supposed to win, which I don’t know there are many teams in the country that were able to do that.
“You know, our schedule probably didn’t help us in some strength-of-schedule stuff. But I think beyond a shadow of a doubt this team is a NCAA tournament team. And you hope the committee sees the overall body of work is good enough to get us in. It would be a shame if we’re not, because this team is good enough to be in the NCAA tournament. I’d love to see us get in and have a chance to play somebody outside the league and see what we can do.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.