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Notepad: Rickea Jackson scores 29 points, but the Lady Vols basketball team loses the last game of the regular season.
The Lady Vols basketball team suffered a 76-68 loss against South Carolina in their final regular season game.
No. 1 South Carolina (29-0, 16-0) was too strong for the Lady Vols (17-11, 10-6 SEC), despite the scoring efforts of Rickea Jackson and Jasmine Powell.
“We’ve played against a fantastic basketball team,” stated Tennessee head coach Kellie Harper. Simply put, they don’t have many flaws. They are able to protect.
They are able to score. They are able to recover. They have a large group of players who can score. We were aware that it would be difficult. I felt that throughout the game, we accomplished some fantastic things.
These are three lessons learned from the defeat.
The fight on the glass was decisively won by South Carolina. Tennessee’s rebounding against the Gamecocks was loose throughout the contest.
Harper remarked, “They’re a great rebounding team.” “I believe we overlooked a couple execution box-outs. This time, we didn’t receive as many O boards.
It is imperative to win the board game while playing a squad like the Gamecocks, but Tennessee was unable to do it. It took more physicality from South Carolina than it did from Tennessee to bring down and compete for offensive and defensive boards.
Against South Carolina’s 57 rebounds, the Lady Vols had 41. With eight rebounds, Jackson led Tennessee, followed by Jewel Spear’s seven.
Harper stated, “Some executions were missed.” We missed some lengthy rebounds that we had. We’ll examine that again later. They look amazing on the boards, in my opinion. They won’t be kept at zero by you. It is not going to occur. It’s not ideal to have that gap, but you probably won’t even keep them low.
Fourth-quarter momentum
During the final quarter, Tennessee started to rise. The Lady Vols prevailed 20-17 in the final quarter, despite South Carolina’s victories in the first and third quarters.
Looking at the big picture, Harper stated, “I think we have grown in so many ways.” There’s a reason no one has defeated that team. They are excellent. We did not retreat.
I was proud of our team. I thought we competed. I think we’ve been trending upward. We’ve been playing some really good basketball, some tough basketball that should serve us well in tournament time.”
Jackson was a force for the Lady Vols in the last quarter. Jackson led the game with 29 points, 10 of which were in the fourth quarter.
“I thought she had a great mentality throughout the game,” Harper said. “I know that was not easy, but I thought she handled it really well. I thought she was very positive with her teammates. I thought she communicated well with them. I thought she played pretty tough. I think her teammates, you could see they had a lot of confidence in her throughout that game.”
Mental toughness will be carried onto postseason
Despite being out-played by the Gamecocks, the Lady Vols continued to fight until the last minute, even when the lead became out of reach.
“I feel like it says a lot about our team,” Jackson said. “I’m proud of how we were able to keep our minds in the game. Other teams probably would have just given up seeing that they were down by a large number, but I feel like we just continued to fight. I feel like I’m just proud of how we handed ourselves.”
Even when the Gamecocks went on scoring runs, Tennessee worked to stay in it. Tennessee refused to tap out of the game and make uncharacteristic errors, instead they worked together to find points in crucial moments and create challenges for South Carolina’s offense.
“I thought we stayed together,” Spear said. “We could have definitely folded when we were down by 11. But instead we came together and we talked about different things that we could have adjusted to on the court. So I thought we did a really good job of that, and we responded.
I think we went down two or three points, so it just shows you how much we can do, especially on the road here at South Carolina.”
