Tennessee Lady Vols Fall 67-62 at Ole Miss Rebels: 5 Takeaways

The Tennessee Lady Vols lost their second straight SEC game Thursday. Here are five takeaways from the women’s basketball Volunteers losing in Oxford.

Just when you thought the Tennessee Lady Vols were getting back on the right track, Holly Warlick’s team is back on a losing streak. This time, it was a bad loss to the Ole Miss Rebels.

This was the Lady Vols’ first loss to a team outside of the Top 100 in the RPI and only their second loss to a team outside of the Top 25 of the RPI.

Tennessee’s loss came on the heels of a 10-point loss to the No. 4 ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs this past Sunday. Before that, they were on a six-game winning streak with two wins against Top 25 teams.

Volunteers fell to 10-6 on the year and 2-2 in SEC, while the Rebels improved to 13-4 on the year and also 2-2 in the SEC while getting only their second victory against a Top 100 RPI opponent.

Here are five takeaways from Tennessee’s loss.

1. Depth is catching up again.

A week ago, Holly Warlick was up to running eight players on her thin roster, but she’s now back down to seven. Meanwhile, Ole Miss went 10-deep. That was all the Rebels needed to win this game at home.

Despite getting off to an ice-cold start, the Tennessee Lady Vols built a five-point halftime lead and still led going into the fourth quarter. But they were outscored 20-13 in the fourth and visibly gassed once again, particularly on the final few plays when they needed a bucket on offense and couldn’t get it. Diamond Deshields is being over-used in the process and running out of juice. This remains a problem.

2. Shot-creation is atrocious.

Alexa Middleton could not find her shot off the bench all night, Deshields is just getting too tired to do anything, and Mercedes Russell found no rhythm under the basket. The result was an abysmal shooting night where the Lady Vols went 1-of-9 from three. They have got to get better there.

The only thing keeping them in the game had nothing to do with shot-creation at all. It had to do with the one piece of good news we found out tonight.

3. Jaime Nared can stretch the floor and handle iso plays.

This is a huge thing to find out with Deshields facing the burden of creating for everybody. Jaime Nared was left alone on plays all night, and to her credit, she delivered. Nared finished the game with 23 points on 9-of-18 shooting. She also showed her aggression in the process.

That was evident by Nared’s seven rebounds under the basket. But speaking of under the basket, she couldn’t do it all, which brings us to our next point.

4. Mercedes Russell needs more touches.

Sure, she was 4-of-14 in the game, but Mercedes Russell only had four shots in the second half and made two of them. She still finished with 12 points, six rebounds, and even four steals. Part of that was because despite her struggles, she was 4-of-5 from the free throw line.

Holly Warlick should have gone to Russell a heck of a lot more in the game, even with Nared thriving in the iso. Making Ole Miss respect her could have kept the offense in rhythm as opposed to having the atrocious shot selections that they did have.

5. Defense is collapsing.

This could be a result of two other takeaways, but for the second game in a row, the Lady Vols had spurts of terrible defense. Those two other takeaways, by the way, are fatigue and terrible shot selection.

Anyway, the Lady Vols did their job on Taylor Manuel inside, but they got distracted by the Rebels’ guards. Madinah Muhammad and Shandricka Sessom combined for 35 points on the night, and lots of the time it happened with them driving inside. That means the guards and interior defenders all failed massively. If Tennessee is to get back on track, defense has to be much better next game.