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Tennessee Lady Vols don’t get a break in SEC Tournament

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - JANUARY 21: Tennessee Volunteers fans hold up a cardboard photo of women's basketball coach Pat Summitt during the game against the Connecticut Huskies at Thompson-Boling Arena on January 21, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennessee defeated Connecticut 60-57. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - JANUARY 21: Tennessee Volunteers fans hold up a cardboard photo of women's basketball coach Pat Summitt during the game against the Connecticut Huskies at Thompson-Boling Arena on January 21, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennessee defeated Connecticut 60-57. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /
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The Tennessee Lady Vols enter the SEC Tournament as a No. 8 seed. But the women’s basketball Volunteers have no shortcuts to win the title.

Even with their 18-11 record and 7-9 SEC record that included horrible losses to the Arkansas Razorbacks, Alabama Crimson Tide and most notably the Vanderbilt Commodores at home, you couldn’t always count the Tennessee Lady Vols out of the SEC Tournament. After all, they are a very talented team.

Despite losing to all top four seeds in the tournament, Tennessee did play the Kentucky Wildcats extremely close. Meanwhile, they have beaten teams like the Missouri Tigers, who beat the Mississippi State Bulldogs, on the road. And they swept the Auburn Tigers.

Simply put, it wasn’t crazy to see a scenario where they got put into the right bracket and rolled through the tournament through a series of breaks. However, it’s not going to go that way for them this time around.

The Tennessee Lady Vols do open the tournament against a team they did beat, the LSU Tigers, on Thursday. But if they win that, then their very next opponent is Mississippi State, easily the best team in the conference and the team that beat UT by 28 earlier this year.

That’s the last thing Holly Warlick needed when, for the first time ever, her team is counting on a run in the SEC Tournament to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. They dug their own grave in that regard, but it’s a problem nonetheless.

Of course, if they get past Mississippi State, then the next round would be in their favor as well, as they would face either the one top-four seeded team that they gave a game to, Kentucky, or the Florida Gators, the Ole Miss Rebels, or Missouri. UT beat all three of those teams.

So outside of Mississippi State, they honestly could not have asked for a better draw to make it to Sunday. With Mississippi State waiting on Friday, though, they have no easy roads to the SEC Tournament championship. This is a problem they created, and it’s one they will have to deal with.

Getting past LSU is the first order of business, obviously. But if UT does that, they will have the most daunting task of the year: beat the best team in the SEC or miss out on the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever.

If they do get past Mississippi State, however, then it would be euphoric in many ways. Upsetting the Bulldogs alone could be enough to lock them up in the NCAA Tournament, and the nature of the win would do wonders for the morale of the team. Then there’s what we already mentioned, which is how the rest of that side of the bracket favors them significantly.

Here’s the problem, though. Anybody who has seen this team knows that the minute they taste a bit of success, it’ll go to their heads, and they could mess up in the next game against a lesser opponent. That’s been the nature of the season, so even everything falling in their place and an upset over the Bulldogs still wouldn’t guarantee anything. But no matter what, this is a huge task.