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Tennessee Lady Vols player awards for 2019-2020 season

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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In her first year as Tennessee Lady Vols head coach, Kellie Harper saw lots of players step up for her. Here are our women’s basketball Volunteers awards.

We’ll never know if the Tennessee Lady Vols were about to miss their first NCAA Tournament. However, they get a mulligan for this year. After all, the program had to deal with the arrival of Kellie Harper and then the unexpected season-ending injury to Zaay Green, who was supposed to be its premiere guard for the season.

Taking that into account, finishing 21-10 overall and 10-6 in the SEC regular season is worthy of praise. Given how everything played out, there was a good chance this team wouldn’t even be on the bubble when everything was over.

Sure, they had a No. 95 ranked strength of schedule and only one quality win. But the Tennessee Lady Vols had no bad losses on the year. So they at least ran the table, which can be hard to do on its own. Injuries and a key coaching change made it harder for this team.

In this post, we’re going to recognize the players responsible for keeping them above water. These are our yearly postseason recognitions for individuals in the women’s basketball program, and lots of them deserve credit for stepping up.

Now, with many of these players, consistency was a major issue. But the transition and injury we mentioned forced larger roles on them than they expected, and there was a lot of youth in this program. So we have to point all of that out.

Our list of awards includes 6th-woman, most improved, newcomer, defensive player and MVP. It’s also worth noting ahead of time that everybody on this list will be back next year, as the only two seniors on the team were Lou Brown and Kamera Harris. Neither started, and neither was among the top performers off the bench. That’s something that makes the program’s future exciting.

Combine that with the return of Green from an injury, and this team could be loaded. Let’s look at the top performers from this year who could be a part of that and acknowledge what they did for the program. These are our Tennessee Lady Vols awards for the 2019-2020 season.