No Championship for You: Lady Vols 71, Arkansas 72 (OT)

on the post game radio was like fingernails on a blackboard

Meighan Simmons came out shooting well and giving 100% effort with great defense and made a couple of effort turnovers. She was our leading scorer and was benched a 6 minutes
When the half ended she was still our leading scorer

In the second half she came out with 100% effort again and had two quickness assists that got both Glory and Kinna their first points of the game
but she mishandled one pass out of bounds and was benched until overtime

This isn’t a player effort mistake – It’s a coaching nightmare of epic absurdity
There is simply no excuse for it.
This loss is due to stupid coaching decisions and four missed free throws that should not have mattered.

We have 3 great players – Glory Kinna and Meighan and this staff fooled around and played Meigan just 15 minutes. You have to have your best on the court and if they lose then you can play the blame game.
This was a disaster worse than her 24 min vs SC and at KY and 21 min vs UVA
and her 25 min vs Vandy

Meighan played 35 min vs KY in the big win
She played 30 min and scored 19 in our best win vs Miami
she played 40 min in our big win vs Rutgers
She played 30 min in our win over UGA
She has to be on the court and encouraged and confident. We lose when she isn’t playing

kudos to the staff for figuring out that anytime Tennessee went man, Arkansas ran an iso 1-4 to get C’eira RIcketts against Ariel. After something like 27-28 minutes of Ricketts taking Ariel to school, they finally moved Glory to cover Ricketts (who was straight-up shut down whenever that happened). Arkansas in turn started running ball screens, taking advantage of the man-switch until they got the Ricketts-Ariel matchup again. Ariel never had an answer, so Arkansas won.

this is the second close game the Ladies have lost thanks in part to an absurd end-of-shot-clock three; Kentucky in Lexington was the other one..(I still have no clue how A’Dia Mathies made that, let alone while getting fouled.) Watkins’ chuck-it-at-the-front-of-the-rim-and-hope three ended up getting the game to OT.

Weird.

some interesting stats
Cierra was perfect at 2 for 2 in 22 minutes but she only got open for 2 shots and had 2 TO’s and 3 rebonds
Meighan was 3 for 5 for 7 in 15 minutes with 2 assists *it was more 2 rebounds and 4 TO’s
Taber was 1 for 3 for 3 in 32 minutes with 4 TO;s no assists, rebounds or steals
Miko was 2 for 5 for 4 in 19 minutes with 0 T0s 3 rebounds and an assist

Cierra got the 2nd most minutes hit 2 shots and had 2 TO’s with 3 rebounds so she was more productive than Taber

MIko had the 3rd most minutes hit 2 of 5 and an assist 3 rebounds and 0 TO’s so she was more productive than Cierra given fewer minutes

Meighan was high scorer of these 4 with 7 points from the field 2 rebounds and assists and equalled Taber’s TO’s but she played excellent defense

Manning with 13 minutes got 4 assists 2 points a rebound and a steal with no TOs. and played defense.

So what was it with this staff and Taber over Meighan or Cierra
What game were they watching?
Taber and Cierra are our gym rats and they scored 7 points from the field to equal Meigan’s scoring in 15 minutes while the two of them played 54 minutes. They had a combined 6 TOs to Meighan’s 4 and had one more rebound, one less assist.

Is this becoming more clear now. 54 minutes to 15 – two players to one and better productivity and defense from the single 15 minute player?
Can you defend that decision to hide her on the bench
Do you see how we would have won this game
Was this anything but a coaching decision?