KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – No. 15/13 Tennessee improved to 12-0, shooting a season-high 53 percent from the field to run away from Winthrop on Sunday, 114-50, in front of a season-best crowd of 11,152 at Food City Center in the Lady Vols’ final game before SEC play.
Senior forward Sara Puckett matched her season high of 17 points that she recorded in the previous game vs. Tulsa on Dec. 21 and added a season-best eight rebounds to lead six Lady Vols scoring in double figures. Joining her in double digits were Ruby Whitehorn with 16, Jewel Spear and Kaniya Boyd with 15, Zee Spearman with 14 and Tess Darby with 10. Boyd’s point total surpassed her previous career scoring high of six vs. Richmond on Dec. 20, and her four assists equaled her personal best vs. Liberty on Nov. 16 and tied Samara Spencer for team honors vs. the Eagles on Sunday.
Winthrop, which fell to 6-7, featured only one player scoring in double figures. Amourie Porter contributed 14 points to her team’s cause, making most of them via an 8-for-8 day at the charity stripe.
The Lady Vols came out sizzling, bolting to an 11-0 lead out of the gate on a three-pointer and paint jumper from Puckett and back-to-back threes from Boyd and Spencer. After Winthrop got on the board via a Leonor Paisana trey at the 5:42 mark, a Darby long ball and Talaysia Cooper putback sent UT into the 4:07 media break with an 18-5 cushion. Another Spencer trey and two more from Spear enabled the Big Orange to finish the first quarter seven of 13 beyond the arc and push the score to 35-13 after one.
After the Eagles notched the first two scores of the second stanza to cut the gap to 35-17 with 9:18 to go, a Jillian Hollingshead old-fashioned three-point play and buckets by Whitehorn and Alyssa Latham lifted Tennessee to a 42-17 lead with 7:10 remaining. Layups by Darby and Cooper and a putback by Latham then propelled the Lady Vols into the 4:53 media timeout with a 48-20 advantage. After a pair of Winthrop free throws by Porter trimmed UT’s lead to 26, 48-22, the Big Orange got a layup from Whitehorn, a steal and score from Spear and single free throws from Spencer and Boyd to build the advantage to a game-high 32, 54-22, with 3:12 on the clock. WU managed to hold the home team without a three in the period, but UT nonetheless outscored the visitors 26-19 to possess a 61-32 edge at the intermission.
Tennessee pushed the lead to 34 by the 5:41 mark in the third quarter, getting a steal and layup from Darby and a bucket down low by Spearman before Olivia Wagner’s response made it 71-39 and elicited a timeout from the Winthrop coaching staff with 5:20 to go. Spear’s three with 5:12 to go extended the gap to a game-best 35 at 74-39, and that’s what the score remained until the 4:52 media break. UT increased it to a 37-point cushion through the end of the third, as Whitehorn’s layup with 50 ticks left sent the teams into the final 10 minutes with the Lady Vols up, 83-46.
The roll continued into the final frame, as Tennessee put together an 11-2 run to take a 94-48 lead at the 6:26 media timeout, coming on a pair of Spearman layups and another by Spear on the break. Thirteen of 14 Lady Vols who played would etch points in the official scorebook on the afternoon, with the Big Orange closing the game with a 31-4 blitz over the final 10 minutes that included a 17-0 spree from the 8:57 mark until 3:29 remained.
UP NEXT: The Lady Vols open SEC play on Thursday, as they make the trip to College Station to take on the Texas A&M Aggies. Tipoff is slated for 7 p.m. CT (8 p.m. ET) at Reed Arena, on 99.5FM WGRV beginning at 7:30pm.
