KNOXVILLE - For a half Sunday, things appeared to be getting back to normal for the Tennessee women's basketball team.
Unfortunately for the Lady Vols, that was the first half against Georgia. In the second half the issues that have plagued them recently - poor shooting, mainly - came back to haunt the team.
The Lady Vols lost a third consecutive game for the first time since 1986, 66-62 at Georgia, and Monday dropped from 13th to 20th in the Associated Press poll. Tennessee's losses at home against Missouri and Kentucky and on the road to the Lady Bulldogs have been by a combined eight points.
The Lady Vols led by as many as 17 points in the first half Sunday, holding a 36-24 lead at the break on the strength of a dominating defensive performance. Georgia shot 28 percent in the first half, but in the second half it was the opposite.
Tennessee made only eight of 33 shots after halftime. Take out Evina Westbrook, who was 5-for-9 in the second half, and the Lady Vols were 3-of-24.
Sophomore guard Rennia Davis - the team's third-leading scorer for the season - was 2-for-12 from the field Sunday and was one of three Tennessee players to finish with six points. She told reporters Sunday that the "shots were makeable," while both Westbrook and coach Holly Warlick assessed that the misses affected the other end of the court.
"I think we got down on ourselves," said Westbrook, who finished 9-for-16 from the field and had 23 points and six assists. "Even though we're not making shots, we have to be able to come back and play defense."
After the loss to Kentucky, the team had a meeting in which each player's role was defined. That appeared to work well in the first half Sunday, but the end result was the Lady Vols failing to shoot at least 40 percent from the field for the third consecutive game. Seniors Meme Jackson and Cheridene Green combined to make four of 13 shots from the field.
"We just talked about lost opportunities we'd had over the last two games," Warlick said of the meeting. "We had two good practices. Evina and Rennia did a great job of getting the team up and getting them focused. Sometimes the game relies on these two, and when any of these guys are struggling, we've got to have some guys step up.
"I thought we were very prepared, but it appears we let our offense affect our defense. That's youth; we've got to get past that. I thought everybody was focused the last couple of practices, and we came out like gangbusters.
"These are the things we've got to learn from. Are we young? Yes, but these guys have to play. Our sophomores are our leaders; they're no longer youth. Like it or not they have to grow up, have a key leadership role for us, keep focusing and moving forward."
The team has shot 46-for-75 (61 percent) from the free-throw line during the three-game skid, which hasn't been good for a team that likes to attack the paint and get fouled.
Westbrook leads the team in scoring at 16.3 points per game. After Davis's 14.7, Jackson is third at 13.1, but she's only 3-for-22 from the field in the past three games.
The Lady Vols need a player to step up.
"We had great opportunities for these young ladies to help our scorers, and we didn't get it done," Warlick said. "We missed a lot around the basket; those go in, we're talking about something different. We've just got to go back and correct it. We've got kids that can score the ball, and in the first half we played really smart. The last two games I thought we took some bad shots; today I don't think we took too many bad shots, and we talked about that in the meeting.
"Kids have to step up and make shots around the basket, and those are things we've got to continue to correct."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.