It’s Softball Time In Tennessee!

Sherry Parker Lee Stadium will be open for business this Thursday at 3 PM, weather permitting, for the home opener for the 2016 season. I’m ready.

One of the nice traditions since we’ve been here has been players delivering season ticket packages to select season ticket holders. Obviously, there are too many for everybody to receive them personally, but it’s a nice gesture and one of the many ways the team shows its appreciation for fans. It begins with the Weeklys, who are always accessible, and carries over through the staff and players; fans are never taken for granted, which is probably one of the reasons the program is growing every year, to the point where most SEC games are sellouts. Last year we were scheduled to get our tickets hand-delivered. Someone from the ticket office called to see if we would be home on the date. I was delighted to say we would be. Alas, mother nature had other plans. A snowstorm on the designated evening grounded all flights. It wasn’t practical to reschedule on another night, and so we missed our chance.

This year’s distribution came off better, Here are a few shots from the team’s twitter feed of lucky patrons getting their tickets:

Our tickets came through the mail and we’re ready to go. It’s a young team playing the toughest schedule in team history, but there’s no reason to think they won’t be in the thick of things. Go (Lady) Vols!

Unranked? Unthinkable

The Lady Vol basketball team failed to make the top 25 rankings after their frustrating loss to LSU on Sunday. The times, they are a-changin’. This ended a streak of over 30 years of being ranked somewhere in the top 25 every single week. What was most frustrating was it happened on a game that was a winnable game right up to the last seconds. The formula f0r success is known to every armchair coach: Get up by more than a bucket. Make your free throws. Don’t foul. Because of cable problems I was only able to see the 2nd half. Tennessee scored only 18 points in the first half (to 28 for LSU), so perhaps it was no great tragedy to have missed it. The second half was better, and there were flashes of brilliance moments, but in the end it wasn’t sustained nearly enough. We know what we have on paper. We see it, occasionally, on the court. This is a team which in theory can beat anybody. Also lose to anybody. Like the last place team in the SEC. The voters really had little choice. The only thing that could have kept the team in the top 25 after this performance was nostalgia.

Predictably, the chorus of disgruntled fans calling for Coach Warlick’s head got a little louder. More bad news followed today with the announcement that Jasmine Jones will not be returning ever, after doctors determined her concussion history makes any further participation in contact sports too risky. One of our consoling facts has been the hope that Jones would recover, giving needed depth to the thin front court line.  There’s not a lot of joy in the stands these days. Bubbles are all but burst, and the fair weather fans are abandoning ship.

I’m of the opinion that Warlick deserves at least two more years, to see if this is a fluke, which it could be, and to see this group through. Great talent doesn’t always translate to great results. Some dishes take longer to make than others. If she can turned this group in individual stars into a team, and they reach the final four or better still the championship game, all will be forgiven. These players need to jell, find out how best to work together. and play to their talents. Team leaders need to step up and take charge. Everybody wearing the uniform whether they are playing a lot of minutes or not has to want this more. This is, again, a young team. The experts all think it is a talented team, not living up to expectations. This is also Holly’s team; she recruited them, they signed to play here, and she has been successful and her teams have been improving every year, until now. A trip to the Final Four, the goal every season, seems a remote possibility this year, particularly as playing the first round at home this year looks to be out of the question. But there have been the injury problems, and again, this team is YOUNG. Let’s see where they are when Russell and DeShields are seniors before considering a coaching change. It’s not like another Pat Summitt is out there, waiting in the wings to take over. There are many good coaches, but not many great ones.

I’m not overly concerned about the failure to sign a major recruit in the fall. It would have been nice, certainly, particularly to get another big, but many factors go into it. I would suggest one is, again, the team’s youth. A lot of players coming out of high school want the chance to play right away and may be more inclined to go to a team that is more laden with seniors. A correspondent in the paper suggested the real problem is Dave Hart and his perceived war on women’s athletics. While this may make sense to those disgruntled about the changes taking place by the merging of the men’s and women’s athletic departments, and the loss of the “Lady Vol” name for all but the basketball team (and the problems with pay disparity between male and female trainers, and the ongoing sexual harassment case), I think it would be the rare recruit who examines it that thoroughly. If a recruit who chose not to come here cites Dave Hart and the lack of support for women’s sports as the reason, I will post a correction.

 

Looking Forward, Looking Up

It’s no secret this has been a frustrating year for Lady Vol fans. It must be even more frustrating for the players and coaches. Preseason expectations were sky high, with a national ranking in the top four. As the uncharacteristic number of losses have mounted, some fans have bailed, while others have called for Holly Warlick’s head. While I haven’t jumped on the Fire Holly bandwagon, I have shared the general negativity and felt the frustration.

Well, I’m here to tell you today, things ain’t that bad.

It’s probable now that the preseason hype was just wrong. The 2015-16 edition of the Lady Vols is not a top 4 team, and probably not a top 10 team. The losses from last year’s squad, Isabelle Harrison, Ariel Massingale, and Cierra Burdick, who were sitting courtside at the South Carolina game Monday night, were too much experience and maturity to lose in a single year. Wit the exception of Geno Auriemma’s squads at Connecticut, and possibly Muffet McGraw’s at Notre Dame, women’s college basketball teams need time to mature and learn how to win at the college level. Let’s give Geno and Muffet their due; they are proven, exceptional coaches, on the level that Pat Summitt was in her glory days, but most coaches and most players don’t have that magic touch, whatever it consists of, which doesn’t mean they aren’t good coaches. It’s just that coaches who can hit the ground running with underclassmen are exceedingly rare. There isn’t one out there waiting to replace Holly, who is as good a coach as we’re likely to find considering neither Auriemma or McGraw are looking for a job.

The South Carolina game was another loss, but Tennessee showed they belonged on the same floor with the number #2 team in the country, and that’s not nothing. They played hard, they played together, and they were competitive, until the fourth quarter when it got away from them, but even then they rallied and at the end were closing the gap. They are perhaps one big player away from winning the game. Or, perhaps, one year of experience away.

Fans who have been around for a few years should remember that Harrison, Burdock, and Massingale were not, as freshmen and sophomores, the players they were as juniors and seniors. They IMPROVED exponentially as they matured.

Now, consider the core of this year’s team.

The only seniors are Bashaara Graves and Nia Moore. Obviously, Bashaara is a very accomplished player who will be missed. Nia is a fan favorite who has provided valuable minutes but has never factored very much in the game to game grind.

This means, EVERYBODY ELSE is coming back next year.

Red shirt players, who have an extra year of eligibility because of injuries or transfers and will benefit from the extra time, are:

Andraya Carter, junior. High energy player, perhaps should be considered a role player rather than a team leader. Seems to have lost a bit of speed and hops, wearing the leg brace.

Diamond DeShields, sophomore. Hugely talented. Some difficulties meshing with the rest of the team, and sometimes prone to forcing plays or pressing, but a nearly unlimited upside.

Mercedes Russell, sophomore. Growing game by game in confidence and leadership. Although some fans consider her play to be beneath the level they expected from the top-ranked recruit in her class, she has the best offensive stats on the team and has been the most consistent player. She’s also holding her own against the taller teams, and I see her improving over the next two years as well.

Jasmine Jones, junior. The x-factor. Concussion issues shortened her season last year, leading to the granting of an extra year of eligibility. Another concussion this year has kept her out of most games again and she has been sorely missed. Was a very productive player, and potentially still a starter as she is extremely athletic, but whether or not she will be again is anybody’s guess, but IF she can go, she will be a major contributor. If not, a major loss.

The rest of the team in order of potential as I see it:

Te’a Cooper, freshman. Already in the starting lineup. Consistency issues, certainly, but physical talent approaching DeShields.

Jaime Nared, sophomore. Versatile, maturing rapidly. Can fulfill many roles well, from taking the lead to supplying support. Good defender, good offensive player. Injured early, she seems to be making up for lost time. This year’s most improved player.

Jordan Reynolds, junior. Not starting recently, but owing more to the emergence of Cooper and Nared than deficiencies in her own game. Tenacious and hard-nosed.

Alexa Middleton, sophomore. I love her game. Like DeShields, a tremendous passer, but also a consistent hard worker on defense (DeShields occasionally gets distracted) with a better than average outside shot. Also like DeShields, her passes too frequently fool the player she is passing to as much as the defense. The cure for that is more playing time.

Kortney Dunbar, sophomore. Deadly outside 3-point shot, still a little slow on defense. Used wisely, which Holly seems to be doing now, she can make a huge difference as a role player, playing catch up or building leads.

Meme Jackson, freshman. Little used, the jury is still out. But I’ve liked what I’ve seen for the most part given her limited playing time.

So, this is my main point: because almost everybody on this team will be back next year, they will almost inevitably be a better than they are now. Seven out of the twelve have at least two more years of eligibility. The future, in other words, is bright.

In hindsight, which is always more reliable than foresight, we (the media, the fans, and the coaching staff) shouldn’t have been quite as high on the squad as we were. A better strategy would have been to discount the high ranking rather than embrace it. Our thinking was, let’s assume the ranking is deserved despite the youth of the team, maybe it will give the young players a confidence to believe they are an elite team, which is what we want to believe as well,  and they might actually perform on that level. it might have worked with some very special teams, with great chemistry and those rare players who hit the ground running, but for this team (and most young teams) excessive praise out of proportion to actual accomplishments is more likely to lead to perhaps a bit more complacency and not enough urgency in preparations and end-game play. Perhaps they would have been better served by having their preseason ranking discounted by Holly and the coaching staff; I think that is the strategy Coach Auriemma is more likely to employ most years. The rankings mean nothing; preseason polls are unearned laurels, you have to show you deserve it on the court, and until you win it doesn’t matter what the press says or what the public thinks. You earn your status on the court, not in the newspapers.

A good tournament run this year is still possible for Tennessee, as the South Carolina game showed. But next year, with lessons learned and still being learned, it should be even more likely.