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.
Hoops and Diamonds 