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Tennessee Lady Vols move to 14-0 with win vs. Auburn: 3 takeaways

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - DECEMBER 17: Tennessee Volunteers fans get ready before a game against the North Carolina Tar Heels at Thompson-Boling Arena on December 17, 2017 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - DECEMBER 17: Tennessee Volunteers fans get ready before a game against the North Carolina Tar Heels at Thompson-Boling Arena on December 17, 2017 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /
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The Tennessee Lady Vols remain undefeated after beating the Auburn Tigers. Here are three takeaways from the women’s basketball Volunteers’ 70-59 victory.

In their first home game in two and a half weeks, the Tennessee Lady Vols gave their crowd something to cheer about. Holly Warlick’s team defeated the Auburn Tigers 70-59 to improve to 14-0 and 2-0 in the SEC.

With the loss, Auburn fell to 9-4 on the year and 1-1 in the conference. How good they are is still up for debate since they entered the game with a schedule strength ranked outside of the Top 200.

At the same time, Tennessee hasn’t played the strongest schedule yet. So while this is a win against a team with a winning record, the questions still remain.

Tennessee struggled with the Tigers for a while, including going into halftime and going into the fourth quarter with the game tied. But they pulled away in the fourth. Here are three takeaways from the Tennessee Lady Vols’ win.

1. Turnovers are getting worse and made this game ugly.

The Tennessee Lady Vols would have beaten the Auburn Tigers by 20 points if it wasn’t for turnovers. But this team has had trouble taking care of the basketball all year. And it was awful on Thursday night.

Warlick’s team turned it over 28 times, which is a hideous stat line. Evinna Westbrook was the worst culprit with nine turnovers. But Cheridene Green and Anastasia Hayes were no better off the bench, as both committed five turnovers. Now, to be fair, this is a team that forces nearly 25 turnovers a game. So this is how Auburn stays in games. But an elite team like Tennessee has to overcome that. And they didn’t on Thursday. It almost cost them.

2. Tennessee once again dominated in the paint.

Auburn played aggressive and forced a lot of mistakes for the Tennessee Lady Vols. But Mercedes Russell and Jaime Nared went to work inside. Nared had 19 points and 11 rebounds while Russell added 10 points and six rebounds. Overall, they outrebounded the Tigers 44 to 37.

On top of that, Russell and Nared both had four blocked shots. The team had nine overall as Hayes added a block off the bench. And they were able to force the Tigers to play their game late, which leads to our final point.

3. Depth once again looked better than last year.

The Tennessee Lady Vols entered the fourth quarter tied. Auburn was forcing them to run at a fast tempo and had the game ted at 57 with two minutes to go. With a shortened rotation that Warlick runs, this would seem to favor the Tigers, who will go 10-deep sometimes. However, Tennessee controlled the final two minutes of the game. And it wasn’t just by dominating inside.

Evinna Westbrook hit two jumpers, including a three-pointer. Nared didn’t miss any of her four free throw attempts in those minutes. And Anastasia Hayes got three points off an and-one while also hitting another free throw. Hayes was able to stay in the game late, and she and Westbrook really helped to take over scoring down the stretch. More options like that are very helpful for the Tennessee Lady Vols, and that’s why this is still a good win. Now they have one more easy game that they have to handle before their brutal stretch run begins.