More photos » by Darron Cummings - AP

(AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Browse more photos »

Lady Vols basketball is back!

Tonight will be an exhibition game against the relatively local Carson-Newman Lady Eagles  We'll start talking more about the Lady Vols as the beginning of the actual season approaches, but here are a few bits of information for you.

Coverage

The game will start at 7  PM EST in TBA.  Live video will be broadcast over the internet, courtesy of CBSSports.com.  Here is the link, which should open in a new window.  (If that doesn't work, go here.  Also opens in a new window.)

Starting Lineup

The starters have been announced, and in true exhibition fashion, will give a chance for youth to learn first-hand alongside experience.  One interesting note here is that there are no seniors in the lineup whatsoever.  Get used to these names; they are going to be here for a while.

Trolling the news articles and postgame interviews after the Lady Vols loss to Ball State, a few gems turned out.  You have to give the coaching staff this much:  they don't shy away from sharing their thoughts with the fans, which is greatly appreciated.

Dean Lockwood

One of the assistant coaches - Dean Lockwood - drew the short straw and gave a postgame interview with Mickey Dearstone after the game.  (Link:  pops up in a new window.)  Some of his observations:

• "This is by far ... the most embarrassing loss in the history of the program." 
  
• "No discredit to Ball State. ... Ball State came out and played a heck of a basketball game."
• "We're not satisfied.  Our players better not be satisfied."
• "Our posts collectively were 9 for 25.  And ... Kelley was 5 of 7. ...   So now we're 4 of 18.  So again, bottom line is that the job isn't getting done."
• "I think they looked at this team and didn't feel the sense of being threatened like we felt: against a Vanderbilt; against a Florida; against an Auburn that we had in more recent games."
• ""I call it competitive immaturity. ... We're competitively immature at times.  And what happens is, in our competitive immaturity, we look at that and we say, "Oh, gosh.  They're not a Duke.  They're not a Florida.  They're not a Vanderbilt.  So consequently, maybe we can get by with a little less effort."
• "When you compromise effort and toughness, that's your first sign of destruction."

Pat Summitt

(In the immediate postgame comments.)

• "Gotta give Ball State credit.  They were a lot tougher physically - just more aggressive, made shots.  We didn't come ready to play."
• "We had a lot of people that didn't defend, and particularly in the one-on-ones."
  
• "One of the toughest losses I've ever had to deal with at Tennessee."

Angie Bjorklund

(Who played all 40 minutes and scored 14 points.)

• "If no one is motivated right now then they need to leave."

Kelley Cain

(Who left in the first half after aggravating her right knee.  She, by the way, had 10 points and 8 rebounds in 14 minutes.)

• "It's one of the hardest things I've had to do.  My heart said one thing but my body told me no."

First, there must be some applause.  Pat Summitt made the second weekend of NCAA play for every single weekend up until now.  That's a mark of such significant proportions that nobody can belittle it just because of one upset.

This is a team that has clearly been the victim of history and expectation.  If you really want to rattle off the accomplishments of the Lady Vols throughout history (not including this year), the includes more than just these few bullet points:

• Second round of NCAA tournament for every year of its existence (27-year streak)
  
• Nearly half of all games played against ranked teams
• 8 National Championships
• 18 Final Four appearances
• 13 SEC Tournament Championships
• 14 SEC Regular Season Championships
• The greatest NCAA tournament upset run ever:  (1997)
• 983 wins to a mere 182 losses (0.843 winning percentage)

Beyond UT, Pat Summitt has been the ambassador of women's basketball.  One of the programs that beat UT this year owes its very existence to Pat Summitt.  In the early '90s, when Oklahoma was considering folding their women's program, Pat helped provide the motivation necessary to keep it in existence.  She's also a large part of the reason for UConn's success; had she not been willing to take them on, they might never have reached the notoriety and had the subsequent recruiting success this decade.

So it's no wonder that a pack of freshmen might collapse under the weight of such history.

Continue reading this post »

	March 22, 2009   9:30 EST TV: ESPN2 Internet TV: ESPN360 Internet Radio: Lady Vol Network Live Stats: GameTracker
22-10 (9-5)   18(AP)   23(USA Today)		25-8 (14-2)   NR(AP)   NR(USA Today)

The details of this matchup may be found here.  The quick summary is this:  if UT can minimize Ball State's perimeter game and avoid the mental mistakes that have hurt them this year, they can win this one going away.  But a strong 3-point team always has a fighting chance.  UT fans should know.

GO LADY VOLS!!!

Date:  March 22

Time:  9 PM EST

TV:  ESPN2

Time for a peek at the first round matchup for the Lady Vols in the NCAA tournament.

But the mascot worked so well for men's teams... (via BobMacInnes)

BALL STATE SCOUTING REPORT

Continue reading this post »

Ok, now that we have the men's selection out of the way, we know that the NCAA committee officially hates the men's team.  A #9 seed was the lowest possible defensible seed for them to be placed, and most projectiones were hovering around the 6 to 7 mark.  But enough of that for this thread.

Time:  7 PM EST

TV:  ESPN

Internet TV:  ESPN360

Now it's time to focus on the Lady Vols.  A quick reminder of the resume:

• Record:  22-10
• OOC:  13-5
• Strength of Schedule:  #1
• RPI:  #9
• Key Wins:  Stanford, Vanderbilt, Florida, DePaul, Mississippi State
• Key Losses:  Duke, Virginia, Texas, Auburn

All signs point to a 5-6 seed for the Lady Vols.  Either would be the lowest ever for the program, but the #6 seed might be a bit preferrable; three of the #1 teams really do appear to be in their own class this year (UConn, Oklahoma, and Maryland).  If our Ladies do get stuck in one of those three brackets, I'd rather have it as an Elite Eight matchup than a Sweet Sixteen game.

With the SEC women's basketball tournament over and the NCAA tournament on the horizon, there are a few thoughts and observations that I'd like to clear out of my head.

THE REGULAR SEASON

This has certainly been one of the wildest seasons even for the Lady Vols.  We knew the year would be one of Pat Summitt's most difficult coaching challenges ever; replacing all five of one of the most dominant starting lineups in women's basktball history is not normally a recipe for success.  Throw into the pile that the replacements are majority freshmen, with only one senior and zero juniors to provide in-team guidance and leadership, and you have a time bomb just waiting to explode and leave a mess everywhere.

In the early goings, things seemed to be business as usual for the Lady vols.  In their second game, they did suffer a home loss to a veteran Virginia squad, but they also managed one of the most spectacular road wins ever against Rutgers (aside:  "spectacular" means saving their hind ends after a horrific first half) and also beat a phenomenally good Stanford team at  home in overtime - a Stanford squad that must have been thinking revenge after last year's tournament.

The first real warning sign came against Texas.  In Austin, the Lady Vols appeared to be in over their heads - a sight that hasn't been seen for a long, long time.  It was the first game where you really appreciated the difference between a group of freshmen and a group of seniors as your team's primary bullet point of discussion.  But still, the Lady Vols entered conference play with an 11-2 record - not bad at all for a young team with a tough slate.  In fact, it rather looked like a usual Summitt-esque record.

Then conference play came around.  They got the first win at home against Kentucky, but were then beat in Nashville by a mature Vanderbilt squad.  From the day they played Kentucky, the Lady Vols finished the regular season with an 8-6 (8-4 conference) record - not at all Summitt-esque.  The difference?  In a word, familiarity.  Conference foes are familiar with Pat Summitt teams.  After all, they've been spending the last three decades trying to figure out how to beat them.  There's a decided difference between playing a team you've watched on film and playing a team you've played for several years in a row, and that advantage came to bear against the Lady Vols.  It's not that Summitt was outcoached, but the opposing coaches (many of whom are top-flight coaches living in Pat's very long shadow) knew what adjustments Pat would have to make and how she would approach the team. 

It was also during conference play that the players began to show their youth.  In high school ball, a good team in a good district might play 20ish games in the course of a season.  If there are tournaments involved, that number might even get close to 30.  However, the college game adds about 10 more games on top of that, and the players must also deal with a new living environment and a far more intense schedule of classwork, practices, conditioning, and day-to-day living.  Throughout the back half of the season, the Lady Vols appeared to have the deer-in-the-headlights look and became susceptible to long stretches of inept play.  (I fully believe that they would have beat Oklahoma if it weren't for this.)

In the regular season, we saw everything we hoped to see and everything we feared.  Summitt did a fabulous job coaching; even with all the talent on the team, getting such good play out of such a brand-new team is really remarkable.  Yet the players buckled, and the Lady Vols ended with 9 losses on the season for the first time this millenium.  (It sounds more impressive when you say "millenium" rather than "century" or "decade" or "since 1997".)

SEC TOURNAMENT

Continue reading this post »

	March 7, 2009 6:30 EST TV: SportSouth Internet TV: ESPN360 Internet Radio: Lady Vol Network Alternate: SEC Tourney Radio
22-9 (9-5)   19(AP)   24(USA Today)		28-2 (12-2)   6(AP)   5(USA Today)

(Note:  Stats do not include Friday's performances; neither do they include SEC tournament wins in the conference records.)

With the season-ending win over Vanderbilt and the tournament win over Florida, Tennessee now has solid arguments to be ranked higher than both of those teams in the NCAA tournament.  Factor in the strength of schedule argument, and it's almost assured that they'll be given better consideration than every SEC team except Auburn.

Now they face that same Auburn, who has only lost to Georgia and Vanderbilt in road games.  Realistically, there's no way to actually pass Auburn in NCAA seeding, but a win against Auburn would both bring tremendous confidence to a young team and give Tennessee some strong arguments that they have fixed much of their season's problems and are a much more dangerous tournament team than their record would suggest. 

But Tennessee first must learn how to stop Bonner.  The 6-4 guard (!) just broke the Auburn school record for career points last night, and she dished out 35 against Tennessee in their previous meeting this year.  Somebody besides Bass will have to step up on defense (unless Bass can figure out how to guard somebody a full foot taller than herself).  If they can contain Bonner and minimize the turnovers on offense, the Lady Vols have a real chance. to avenge one more loss and move to the SEC finals.

In the previous two tournament games, some Ladies have stepped up while others have stumbled.  Some, like Bjorklund, have been in both positions already.  Tonight against Auburn, they'll need a solid team effort to win.  It's something they can do; all they have to do is keep focused, play smart, and limit the turnovers.

GO LADY VOLS!!!