GREENVILLE, S.C. — No. 18/17 Tennessee put four players in double figures but it wasn’t enough, as No. 8 seed Vanderbilt defeated the No. 9 seed Lady Vols, 84-76, on Thursday in the second round of the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament at Bon Secours Wellness Arena.
Junior guard Ruby Whitehorn led UT (22-9) offensively with 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting, while fifth-year senior Jewel Spear, senior guard Samara Spencer and redshirt sophomore guard Talaysia Cooper chipped in 13 apiece. Junior forward Zee Spearman led UT on the boards with 10.
Vanderbilt (22-9) was paced by Mikayla Blakes, who led all scorers with 24 points. Iyana Moore was right behind with 23, while Khamil Pierre produced a 16-point, 15-rebound double-double.
UT out-shot VU from the field, 47.1 to 46.3 percent, but the Commodores outscored the Big Orange, 16-3 at the free-throw line, won the battle on the glass by eight and held a 21-6 margin on second-chance points.
Vanderbilt scored the game’s first four points and countered a Cooper bucket with six more points to build a 10-2 lead and force an early UT timeout with 7:24 remaining. The Commodores continued to find the net, building a 17-5 gap by the 6:16 mark, but three-pointers by Tess Darby, Sara Puckett and Whitehorn, and a steal and score by Cooper drew the Lady Vols to within five, 25-20, with 38 seconds to go. A layup by VU’s Madison Greene ended the scoring with her team on top, 27-20, after one.
Tennessee punched back with a 6-2 burst at the beginning of the second stanza, getting a turnaround jumper and a second-chance bucket by Spearman and a driving layup from Avery Strickland to slice the margin to three, 29-26, and elicit a Vanderbilt timeout with 8:35 remaining. A Whitehorn put-back and Darby layup shaved the deficit to one at the 7:46 (29-28) and 5:14 marks (31-30), and then Spencer provided the Lady Vols their first lead, 32-31, with 4:45 to go, much to the delight of the sizable crowd of Big Orange fans on hand. The Commodores, though, were able to use an 8-1 response, capped by a Jane Nwaba second-chance trey, to carry a 39-33 advantage into the locker room at the intermission.
The Lady Vols struck with the first six points of the third period, getting layups from Whitehorn, Alyssa Latham and Hollingshead to knot things up at 39 with just 2:10 elapsed. After VU crept ahead 43-39, a Spear three reeled the Commodores back within one, 43-42, by the 6:42 mark. A seven-point push by Vanderbilt, though, gave it a 50-42 advantage by the 4:54 media break. Tennessee fell behind by as many as 17 on two occasions over the remainder of the frame, including 63-46 with 1:14 to go before a Spencer driving layup cut the deficit to 15, 63-48, by the end of the quarter.
Vanderbilt extended its lead to a game-high 21, 72-51, with 8:15 left in the game, but Tennessee wouldn’t concede. Instead, the Lady Vols fired off an 8-0 volley with Spear contributing a 7-0 personal run to pull her squad within 13, 72-59, with 6:18 left. A Latham layup kept her team within range, 74-61, heading into the 4:48 media break. UT kept the pressure on, getting a Spencer three and then tacking on a Spear trey and back-to-back layups by Whitehorn to make it a seven-point game, 79-72, with 40.4 seconds on the clock. That’s a close as the Lady Vols would get, as the Commodores hit five of six free throws the rest of the way to seal the eight-point win.
