All for Tennessee Women’s Basketball Jan. 25 SEC Power Rankings: Lady Vols Slip

Holly Warlick’s refusal to extend her bench has made the Tennessee Lady Vols the most inconsistent team in the history of women’s or men’s college basktball.

This is a team that got on a six-game winning streak with huge wins over the Kentucky Wildcats and Stanford Cardinal.

And later they beat the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. But sandwiching that Notre Dame win after that winning streak were losses to the Ole Miss Rebels and Auburn Tigers.

What?

The Lady Vols did beat Vanderbilt, the worst team in the SEC, to get back on track. But the blowout loss forced us to drop them in our SEC power rankings. They simply can’t do that.

Because Warlick only runs seven players, Mercedes Russell and Diamond DeShields are shouldering huge loads. The other players have to consistently step up despite their fatigue.

Fortunately for the Lady Vols, as always, they played a very tough schedule this year. So despite their 12-7 record, they are No. 16 in the RPI because of their No. 4 ranked strength of schedule.

Now they have real tests that shouldn’t be tests coming up because of their inconsistencies. The South Carolina Gamecocks on the road are this week. But before that comes the Florida Gators on the road, and it’s crazy when you don’t know which game they’ll win.

But every single game is in play with this team, which makes no sense.