Tennessee Lady Vols: Criticism of Kellie Harper amidst skid is ridiculous

It’s not looking good for the Tennessee Lady Vols right now. Initially, their loss to the Auburn Tigers on the road, the worst team in the SEC, seemed like a fluke. However, the three games since then prove that the loss was much more of a trend and something to worry about.

UT needed a 13-point comeback to beat the Arkansas Razorbacks in overtime at home, and that comeback only happened after the Hogs lost scorer Makayla Daniels. After that, they suffered back to back blowout losses on the road, by 25 to the unranked Florida Gators and by 19 to the banged up and hated UConn Huskies.

Such struggles have now led to criticism of Harper online. That criticism is baseless and makes no sense. Lots of it is based on them struggling to beat a banged up Huskies team. However, that ignores all of the struggles and injuries the Tennessee Lady Vols have faced this year.

Let’s review the story. We don’t have to spend too much time bringing up the Keyen Green injury. UT blew out the Georgia Bulldogs on the road two and a half weeks ago, reached the top five of both polls and was a unanimous No. 1 seed across all NCAA Tournament projections.

However, Green was lost for the season in that game. The struggles started that next game, which was against Auburn. You can roll your eyes all you want at the idea that a backup forward makes this much of a difference, but to do so would be ignoring everything that’s happened in the conglomerate from the start of the season.

Let’s ignore the fact that the Tennessee Lady Vols required a larger role from Green when Rae Burrell was out for an extended period of time. That alone probably had somewhat of an effect, especially with Burrell still likely not being 100 percent.

More importantly, though, is the fact that Green isn’t their only loss at forward. Remember, returning starter Marta Suárez, who started the majority of the season last year, was supposed to be a returning starter and have a breakout campaign. However, she suffered a season-ending injury before the year started.

Harper likely would have run Tamari Key and Suárez in the front court with Alexus Dye and Keyen Green as the backups. Losing one of those players allowed her to at least run a three-player rotation in the post so everybody can get proper rest.

Now, though, she can only run two, and the Tennessee Lady Vols, as a team built on length and playing inside-out, are the last team that can afford to be that thin in the post. It’s a desperate situation to be in, and until Karoline Striplin or Emily Saunders takes a big stride, Harper is severely limited given the system she runs.

Anybody questioning her after these struggles should look at how she got this team through so many wins without Burrell. Remember, they played the opener without Horston and lost Burrell in the second quarter. Then Burrell didn’t return until early in SEC play, and they only had one loss.

Losing Burrell was devastating because she is the Rocky Top’s best player. However, losing Key after losing Suárez at the beginning of the season is more devastating because the inside-out game Harper wants to run is neutralized.

When you take this into account, Harper has been just as limited in what she can do given injuries as Geno Auriemma has. Amidst these struggles, the Tennessee Lady Vols are still 19-4 and 8-2 in the SEC. Their brutal slate combined with key injuries would make anybody’s job impossible.