Tennessee's Cheridene Green looks for an open teammate during Sunday's game against Missouri at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville.KNOXVILLE - Injuries have limited what was already going to be a thin bench for the Tennessee women's basketball team this season.
That doesn't mean coach Holly Warlick doesn't need more out of the players coming off that bench.
Heading into the 13th-ranked Lady Volunteers' game against No. 16 Kentucky (14-2, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) tonight at 7, the challenge for Tennessee (12-2, 1-1) is preventing a second consecutive loss at Thompson-Boling Arena. The program hasn't lost back-to-back home games since December 1996, when Tennessee fell 94-93 in overtime to No. 5 Georgia on Dec. 8, then 82-65 to No. 1 Stanford seven days later.
The 1996-97 Lady Vols lost 10 games but also won the national championship.
The expectations for this team, one with four freshmen and three sophomores on the 10-player active roster, aren't quite that high. Tennessee has been largely buoyed by its starters, having received only 25 points from players off the bench in five games against Power Five competition (Oklahoma State, Texas, Stanford, Auburn and Missouri). Tennessee is 3-2 in those games after a 66-64 home loss to Missouri on Sunday.
The Lady Vols have been able to manage with the limited scoring production from their bench due to strong showings by their starters. That wasn't the case Sunday, when Meme Jackson – the team's top 3-point shooting threat and third-leading scorer this season - missed all nine of her shots and finished with two points.
"We would love for them to contribute a lot more," Warlick said Wednesday. "We are giving them opportunities. We are playing hard, we just have to get a little smarter."
The Lady Vols lost graduate transfer Lou Brown to an ACL injury before the season started, while sophomore Kasiyahna Kushkituah missed three games with a knee injury midway through the schedule.
The 6-foot-3 Brown would have provided a versatile threat in the rotation, having started 71 games and knocked down 80 3s at Washington State. Kushkituah, who's 6-4, averaged 24.8 minutes and 10.2 points the first five games this season but has yet to play more than 18 minutes or score more than five points since returning to competition Dec. 18, when she was held scoreless while playing eight minutes in the 95-85 loss to Stanford.
"I want Kasi to step up more and demand the ball," Warlick said. "I want Mimi Collins to stay in the game; it seems like she has been in foul trouble in three or four games. We need her to step up and use her physicality to rebound."
Only freshman Jazmine Massengill from Chattanooga has scored off the bench for Tennessee since Southeastern Conference play started last week, with the former Hamilton Heights standout contributing three points against Auburn and six against Missouri.
Regardless of who is in the game, the Lady Vols will have to figure out how to improve their consistency in perimeter defense. Missouri made 10 3-pointers Sunday, dropping Tennessee to 0-2 in games in which opponents have knocked down at least 10 3s in a game (Stanford had 14).
Those opponents shot a combined 52 percent from 3-point range (24-for-46). In Tennessee's 12 wins, opponents shot 28 percent from deep.
Kentucky is led by former Bradley Central standout Rhyne Howard, who has averaged 8.1 made 3s per game while shooting 41 percent from behind the arc and has been named SEC freshman of the week five times this season. She leads the Wildcats in scoring, having averaged 17.4 points per game, and rebounding (7.0 per game), and she is among Kentucky's top three in assists, blocks and steals.
"We just have to continue to work on it and be mindful of what we are doing at the time," Warlick said. "Our awareness, we have mental lapses at times. We are still young in spots and still learning.
"We just have to continue to work on it."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.