Better defense, Harrison's return boost Lady Vols
Tennessee got the message, and it got Isabelle Harrison back.
Rank those in any order of importance you please.
With Harrison in the post to stabilize an offense that at least stayed afloat in a game in which Rutgers, even if no longer the team eager to simply pull its opponent under water, was more than willing to grapple, No. 11 Tennessee ground out a 55-45 win Sunday in New Jersey.
A throwback defensive effort? Well, let's not get carried away. But it wasn't a throwaway effort.
This wasn't Candace Parker and Alexis Hornbuckle against Essence Carson and Epiphanny Prince from days gone by, but it was a credibly big game, the only one of the weekend between ranked foes. And for a Tennessee team that, when most of us last saw it two weeks ago against Texas, appeared to have coach Holly Warlick at wits' end, it's a start.
Coming out of the loss against Texas in which they drew Warlick's full wrath for their defensive effort, the Lady Vols held St. Francis (Pa.) to 44 points on 22 percent shooting and forced 21 turnovers. A good start, but honestly, Francis was a better saint than basketball savant. Tennessee then went on the road and held Lipscomb to 35 percent shooting, 21 percent in the first half when it still mattered, and forced 24 turnovers. Again, nice, but Lipscomb might not even be the second-best team in Nashville this season.
Tennessee accomplished much the same defensively against Oral Roberts, Winthrop and Tennessee State in the season's opening weeks. Then it went to Chattanooga and watched (far too literally) the Lady Mocs shoot 53 percent.
Texas, whose players are still largely new to the truly marquee games in women's college basketball, shot 61 percent and scored 42 points against the Lady Vols in the second half -- after opening a double-digit halftime lead.
Cue a coach speaking through gritted teeth.
"The game is about defense and rebounding," Warlick said after the Texas loss. "And we just can't seem to grasp the importance of defense. And it's going to probably take us [to] keep getting our butts beat to realize the importance of getting down and playing in a stance. You can't defend somebody when you're standing straight up, and we seem to think that we can do that. So we'll just have to go back and work and figure out how we can defend people."
Well, Tennessee shot 28 percent on the road Sunday and won by 10 points. So someone figured out something.
Tennessee held DePaul to 48 points in Chicago in the NCAA tournament in 2012, but that wasn't on DePaul's home court. It held a Georgia team ranked in the teens to exactly 50 points in Athens earlier that season. But the last time it went on the road and held a team of consequence to fewer than 50 points was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, against a good-but-not-great LSU during the 2009-10 season. That's not delving into ancient history, certainly not by Knoxville standards, but it's not bad for a team that Warlick two weeks ago intimated couldn't defend a walk-through.
Some of the stinginess on the scoreboard Sunday was the product of pace. Some of it was that Rutgers missed the open jumpers, layups and free throws it hit when it scored 71 points in regulation against North Carolina and 93 in all in a double-overtime loss.
The Lady Vols never completely found an answer for Tyler Scaife, who finished with 22 points, nine rebounds, four assists and two turnovers. Play the game 10 times and Rutgers would score more than 45 points in most of them. It would win some of them too.
But Tennessee kept Betnijah Laney, admittedly with an injured hand, at bay around the basket, something few teams have done this season. And it didn't sit idly by as Rutgers scored two points in the final seven minutes.
Ariel Massengale got a hand in a shooter's face on a long jumper during that run. Jordan Reynolds collapsed on a player trying to settle in the soft spot of the zone defense. Harrison challenged a shot just outside the lane and grabbed multiple rebounds when Rutgers settled for midrange jumpers. Even playing mostly zone, Tennessee became the first team to beat Rutgers on the boards this season. Suffocating? No. Sufficient? You bet.
Effort changes a lot. Let's not kid ourselves; so does having Harrison, who produced a key alteration with less than a minute to play and her team ahead by four points after Tennessee switched back to man-to-man defense. Her double-double was gold.
How good was the defense on the day? Good enough that Warlick could talk about the offense.
"I will take the fault of us shooting poorly because we haven't spent a lot of time shooting the basketball," she said. "We have spent more time with this group stopping the basketball. That has been our priority. These kids, when you recruit them, they are great offensive players, so we have it in us, but it's up to us, the coaches, to turn them into great defensive players."
If she will settle for good enough, at least for now if not next weekend when Stanford comes to Knoxville, Sunday fit the bill.
Weekend headlines
Brian Spurlock/USA TODAY SportsIndiana's Larryn Brooks is 51-for-99 from the field this season (51.5 percent) and averaging 13.8 PPG.• There is a lot of excitement around Indiana basketball because of the arrival of freshman Tyra Buss (more on that later this week), but the optimism in Bloomington doesn't just center on the arrival of a high school scoring legend. It's all the possibilities that come with pairing Buss and sophomore Larryn Brooks together in the backcourt for three seasons.
There is an element of inflation in Indiana's 9-1 start this season, courtesy of a schedule that has been less than robust. Still, as productive as Brooks was a season ago as a freshman, she might be one of the most improved players in the nation in her second season.
Sunday at Milwaukee was typical. Brooks finished with 16 points, nine assists and five rebounds in 33 minutes in an 82-56 win. She missed just four shots all afternoon and hit half of her 3-point attempts. Through 10 games, she is shooting 52 percent from the floor and 45 percent from the 3-point line. Brooks leads Indiana with 41 assists and a nearly two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio. She led the team in scoring a season ago but shot 38 percent and had nearly as many turnovers as her team-high assists.
Brooks has the ability to take chances, be it the range on her shot or the creativity with the ball. Knowing when to take them is key.
• If there is optimism in Indiana, it will be difficult to find any silver linings amid the cloud cover in Minnesota. The Gophers didn't play over the weekend, which was probably just as well after All-American guard Rachel Banham suffered a torn ACL in a midweek game at North Dakota. The best player to wear the uniform since Lindsay Whalen and Janel McCarville, Banham is the NCAA's active leading scorer in all divisions, with enough of a cushion on her lead to hold that title probably through the end of the calendar year.
A season ago, Banham took six more shots per game than any teammate and 10 more shots per game than any other player on the roster who could consistently create her own shot (Amanda Zahui being a wonderfully gifted player but, ultimately, a post player all the same). Through the North Dakota game, Banham was taking about three more shots per game than Shae Kelley, the Old Dominion transfer who isn't going to take people off the dribble like Banham but provides another asset in the frontcourt alongside Zahui. Kelley and Zahui combined for 39 points to stave off any upset bid by a good North Dakota team, with some help off the bench from freshman guard Carlie Wagner, a prolific high school scorer and Minnesota's Miss Basketball a season ago.
Minnesota isn't in good position to move on without Banham. With all she meant to the program and the offense, that isn't possible. But the Gophers do appear to be in better position to deal with it than they would have been in recent times.
• We saw Green Bay beat Wisconsin and Long Beach State beat California, so why not add to the theme with Wichita State beating Kansas State on Friday? The two Kansas schools aren't part of the same university system, but the result still turns the familiar in-state balance of power on its head. It also caps a nice comeback for Wichita State in advance of a daunting trip to Tennessee this week.
Coming off an NCAA tournament berth a season ago in which it scared Penn State in the opening round and with star Alex Harden in place, Wichita State dropped a curiously lopsided game against Eastern Washington early in the season, allowing 86 points. It then lost to Florida Gulf Coast in a mid-major showdown over Thanksgiving. But the Shockers bounced back from the second loss with wins the next two days against Ohio State and Clemson. Then came the 51-48 masterpiece of pace and defense against the Wildcats, Harden scoring the final five of her 22 points in the final minute. Whatever happens in Knoxville, expect Wichita State to make Tennessee work.
• Maine's next game comes Friday against North Carolina in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. With apologies to the Black Bears, the odds are there won't a great deal of suspense as to the outcome. But that doesn't take away from what a program that won four games two seasons ago and couldn't finish its season after a frightening bus crash is doing in its own backyard.
Maine is 7-3 after wins last week against Dartmouth and Northeastern. Those came on the heels of successive victories against Brown, Boston College, Central Connecticut State and Harvard. The unlikely combo of Austrian guard Sigi Koizar and 5-foot-10 forward Liz Wood powers the success. So even if you see a lopsided score flash across the screen this weekend, remember how far Maine has come in a short time to even justify the game.
She Also Starred
Emily Cady, Nebraska: Can a player be overshadowed by a teammate who is herself overshadowed, or does the picture start to get a little M.C. Escher at that point?
Nebraska point guard Rachel Theriot arguably doesn't get the full credit her play merits, at least not nationally, but then where does that leave Huskers forward Emily Cady, who might be even more underrated?
After a roller-coaster week that saw Nebraska beat Duke but lose to Alabama, the Big Ten team worked hard for wins against in-state rival Creighton and Cal State Bakersfield that stabilized momentum last week. Theriot was fantastic against the Bluejays in a matchup of elite point guards with Marissa Janning, totaling 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting and nine assists. But she, like the rest of the team, struggled to find the bottom of the net against Bakersfield. A player who always finds a way to contribute, be it the off-balance 3-pointer she hit against Purdue as a freshman to force a third overtime or a less dramatic offensive rebound to run clock at the end of the game against Creighton, Cady was a constant all week. She finished with 13 points, 15 rebounds and five assists against Bakersfield and 18 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks against the Bluejays. Easily overlooked, impossible to overvalue.
This space covers only games of the past week, so we're officially giving Baylor's Nina Davis honorable mention for scoring 54 points in wins against Idaho and Stephen F. Austin. But can we talk about what she has done the past two weeks? Add in games against Texas-Pan American and Mississippi and Davis has hit 46 of her last 59 shots. How many of us could do that if we were standing right next to the basket with no defense, let alone during a game?
Honorable mention also to Princeton's Blake Dietrick, who led her team to the first 10-0 start in Ivy League history and the No. 2 spot in espnW's mid-major rankings. (You can decide for yourself which is more of an accomplishment.) Her big day Saturday against Binghamton -- 19 points, six assists, one turnover -- was nice, but it was her line of 22 points, eight assists and zero turnovers in a road rout at Michigan that made the week.
Team of the Week
Long Beach State: Green Bay wasn't the only school to knock off its in-state big brother. Far more surprising than that result in Wisconsin was Long Beach State's win against Cal.
While the result understandably shared the headlines with and existed in a different realm of consequence from the decision of Cal players, with the impassioned support of coach Lindsay Gottlieb, to wear T-shirts adorned on the backs with the phrase "#BlackLivesMatter" before the game in support of recent protests, the outcome deserves its own space if we're having a basketball conversation.
Ask people to come up with a complete list of programs that have been to a Final Four and Long Beach State is likely to stump many. But if your sporting memory dates to the Reagan administration, you might remember Penny Toler, Cindy Brown and a pair of Final Four trips. Jody Wynn wasn't even in high school then, but the current Long Beach State coach and California native tipped her cap to that history when she was hired almost six years ago. This is a long way from that, especially since Cal was without Reshanda Gray for more than a half after an ejection, but the win sealed the best start to a season since those Final Four teams and a third win in as many seasons against a Pac-12 opponent (which Long Beach State almost got a few weeks ago in an overtime loss against USC).
Devin Hudson, who scored the winning basket Saturday off an offensive rebound, averaged 13.5 points and 10.5 rebounds in those two games. With a game against LSU and another opportunity to catch some eyes Tuesday, that 23-year NCAA tournament drought could soon become a thing of the past.
Before Next Weekend
Oregon State at North Carolina (Tuesday): It's not quite Oklahoma State -- another team in orange that used a game against North Carolina as its lone early-season test -- but it will be nice to see an intriguing Oregon State team finally play an opponent of similar caliber. Again with the note of caution about the schedule, Sydney Wiese has been as statistically ridiculous, if not more so, than Allisha Gray this season. Wiese not only has a four-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio but also is shooting 67 percent from the 3-point line on more than five attempts per game. Those are the numbers you put up when you find the cheat code for the video game.
Oklahoma at Duke (Wednesday): If you don't like Sherri Coale, you're wrong. Or you're a Texas fan. Coale will go anywhere and play anyone. Whether the Sooners are ready we'll know soon enough. That willingness to take on all challengers resulted in a loss at Arkansas-Little Rock on Sunday (a road test about five coaches of her stature in the country would take). The Sooners committed 29 turnovers in an overtime loss against Kentucky earlier this season and 23 at UALR. Of potentially more concern is the way they lost the battle of the boards in a loss against South Florida. Duke currently runs a 20.6 rebound per game surplus.
Stanford at Chattanooga (Wednesday): The signature game on Stanford's road trip remains the contest in Knoxville on Saturday, but as we saw this season, Chattanooga can hold its own and then some among teams in the Volunteer State. The star in the win against Tennessee, Chattanooga freshman Keiana Gilbert has been quiet of late. She took just seven shots and scored eight points in Saturday's win at UT-Martin and six shots in Thursday's win at Belmont.
Syracuse vs. Baylor (Friday): We already saw Syracuse throw a scare into a national championship contender on a neutral court this season when it pushed South Carolina. The Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician reported coach Quentin Hillsman saying injured guard Brittney Sykes is close to returning, but it seems unlikely that would translate into a season debut against a team like Baylor. Any secret weapon might be a good thing, but the Orange have been suffocating on defense of late.
DePaul at Connecticut (Friday): DePaul has shown an ability to lose valiantly this season, first in the opener against Texas A&M and last week in a high-speed thriller against Notre Dame. Losing valiantly here wouldn't be a bad result. The games against the Aggies and Fighting Irish were in Chicago; this one is in Bridgeport, Connecticut, not a primary home for the defending champions but close enough. The last meeting between these teams was in some respects the game that launched Breanna Stewart. She had 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting in a Big East tournament game as a freshman and then rolled through the NCAA tournament.
