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Tennessee Lady Vols hold off Ole Miss: 3 takeaways from ugly win

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - JANUARY 14: Tennessee Volunteers fans cheer during the game against the Kentucky Wildcats at Thompson-Boling Arena on January 14, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Kentucky defeated Tennessee 65-62. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - JANUARY 14: Tennessee Volunteers fans cheer during the game against the Kentucky Wildcats at Thompson-Boling Arena on January 14, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Kentucky defeated Tennessee 65-62. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /
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The Tennessee Lady Vols beat the Rebels at home Thursday night 75-66. Here are three takeaways from the women’s basketball Volunteers’ victory.

Being disappointed about that four-game stand and staring down a road game against the LSU Tigers Sunday was inevitably going to make the Tennessee Lady Vols Thursday match-up at home against the Ole Miss Rebels a trap game. How do you get up for such a terrible SEC team?

Well, that thought process gave them a scare for a little while. Tennessee needed a solid second half to beat the Rebels by nine points at Thompson-Boling Arena Thursday night.

This comes a day after Holly Warlick insisted that this team was still special. Well, a win’s a win, but it was hideous.

The Lady Vols were able to pull away in the fourth quarter and get an 18-point lead after only being up by six to start it. But they let Ole Miss close strong to make the game look closer than that at the end. And to be fair, it was closer than that.

Tennessee improves to 17-3 overall and 5-2 in the conference while Ole Miss falls to 11-10 overall and 1-6 in the conference. So the win did nothing for Warlick’s team. They would have suffered a lot, however, from a loss. So taking that into account, here are three takeaways from the Tennessee Lady Vols’ victory.

1. Outside shooting was horrendous Thursday night.

Ole Miss was able to give the Lady Vols a scare because of the poor outside shooting. Tennessee was 2-for-11 from the three-point line. As a result, Russell drew a ton of double-teams under the basket. She still managed to get 13 points on 6-of-11 shooting. But she kicked a lot of balls back out to the perimeter, only to watch her teammates miss wide open shots.

2. The bench provided a spark.

Holly Warlick wanted to give Mercedes Russell and Jaime Nared some rest, so she started the second quarter without either player on the floor. In the process, Tennessee extended its lead. Anastasia Hayes finished the game with 16 points off the bench. However, it was all hot and cold. And that hot start to the second was followed by a horrible final six minutes of halftime, even when Warlick brought Russell back in. And that leads to our final point.

3. The Tennessee Lady Vols are far too streaky.

We should have seen that the Notre Dame game was a trend. And that trend showed again Thursday. As we mentioned opening this post, Tennessee built an 18-point lead early in the fourth quarter after starting it only up by six. But they still somehow only won by nine. With six minutes to go in the second quarter, they had a 40-24 lead on the Rebels but let them close on a 14-0 run, which is why it was a two-point game at halftime. These runs are ridiculous, and Warlick need