KNOXVILLE - For an afternoon, everything looked great for the Tennessee women's basketball team. It's been a while since the joy of a dominant win was able to wash over the program, which has been much-maligned.
Now the next step will be how the Lady Volunteers build on it.
The Lady Vols thrashed Ole Miss 81-56 on Sunday at The Pavilion at Ole Miss to end the regular season at 18-11 overall and 7-9 in the Southeastern Conference. There's no doubt that it's been a disappointing campaign with narrow losses early in the conference slate that snowballed into lopsided defeats and head-scratching losses toward the end, but that mattered little on Sunday.
Tennessee went on a 33-9 run over the final 12:18 of the first half and ultimately posted its biggest winning margin since defeating Florida A&M 96-31 on Nov. 18.
"This season has had ups and downs, but we've got to cherish this moment," senior guard Meme Jackson, who scored 20 points Sunday, told reporters after the game. "It's been games we've lost where we've just got to keep our head up, continue to move forward and focus on the next game.
"It's good to finish off the regular season with a win and we did, so it was good for us."
Jackson is the only player in the program to be around for longer than two seasons, and she knows how important a late-season push is. The Lady Vols are not the lock for the NCAA tournament that they have been every season since the tournament was created back in 1982. They are projected now in the field of 64, but they face LSU in their first game of the SEC tournament at noon Thursday in Greenville, South Carolina, and the Tigers are projected as one of the first teams out of the field.
So it stands to reason that the winner of Thursday's game will be in the national tournament, while the loser will be out.
But Sunday could have been a step in the right direction. Tennessee coach Holly Warlick has been preaching for her team to play with effort and passion for weeks, and at times the Lady Vols have responded while at others they haven't - sometimes in the same game. Sunday's win could have been the momentum builder that a youthful team needs going into a game it has to win.
"This season has been up and down. We've seen that," Warlick told reporters Sunday. "We've seen our bad side, too. Is it youth? It didn't look like youth today. That was a confidence builder. When you play hard, play with your heart, play with passion, good things happen. The other games we lost, I would say if every game we battled to the end, I can handle that, but when you see kids underachieve, it's hard.
"Talent doesn't mean anything if you don't play with passion. Tonight we played with passion and we respected the game."
Future Europe trip
The program announced Monday that the 2019-20 team will go on a 10-day, three-game trip through Europe.
The Aug. 6-15 trip will include stops in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. It will be the first Lady Vols summer trip since going to Italy in 2015.
The Lady Vols lose two seniors - Jackson and forward Cheridene Green - and have a three-player signing class that's ranked eighth in the country, led by guard Jordan Horston, rated as the No. 2 player overall. They've also added 6-foot-5 center Tamari Key and 6-5 forward/center Emily Saunders.
SEC honors Collins
Tennessee's Mimi Collins was named the SEC freshman of the week.
The 6-3 Collins averaged 11.5 points per game in the final week of the regular season, making eight of her 13 field-goal attempts, both of her 3-pointers and five of her seven free throws as the Lady Vols went 1-1.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.