KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Woman Vols appear poised to as soon as once more be a pressure in girls’s basketball after the storied program had fallen on some nearly unimaginable exhausting instances.
There have been early match exits, gamers transferring and a coach fired.
However a social media publish captures the journey the Woman Vols have been on: It reveals the late Pat Summitt hugging then-point guard Kellie Jolly celebrating Tennessee’s third straight girls’s nationwide championship and likewise options now-coach Kellie Harper having fun with the Woman Vols’ first Candy 16 berth in six years.
This 🥺🧡 @LadyVol_Hoops pic.twitter.com/NDssT8BGuP
— SEC Community (@SECNetwork) March 22, 2022
“It’s nice as we proceed to take steps ahead,” Harper stated. “It’s the place we should be. We don’t take it as a right. You don’t simply get there. … Numerous actually proficient groups aren’t going to be there this 12 months. There’s been numerous parity. Simply glad we’re considered one of them.”
Harper is in her third season at her alma mater, which occurs to be the one program to play in all 40 NCAA Tournaments and first to win eight nationwide championships.
Harper stated this is a vital step on the street to creating the Woman Vols a nationwide contender and Remaining 4 common once more.
“Clearly I believe there’s a massive accountability that I’ve and that our program has to numerous various things,” stated Harper, considered one of solely two coaches to guide 4 totally different packages to the NCAA Event. “To Pat’s legacy for positive, to this neighborhood, our convention, and girls’s basketball, as a result of I believe when Tennessee is nice, I believe girls’s basketball is best.”
Steffi Sorensen, girls’s basketball analyst for ESPN and SEC Community, agrees. She grew up with newspaper clippings of UConn on one wall and Tennessee clippings on the opposite.
“Anytime you’ve bought Tennessee within the fold, there’s so many Tennessee followers it simply makes the product I believe a lot better, extra attention-grabbing and that’s what we’re used to,” Sorensen stated.
A 70-67 win over Belmont on Monday evening clinched Tennessee’s thirty fifth journey to the Candy 16. The Woman Vols will play top-seeded Louisville on Saturday within the Wichita Regional semifinal in Wichita, Kansas.
MARCH MADNESS: 2022 NCAA Ladies’s Basketball Schedule, Bracket and Scores
Candy 16s, Remaining Fours and nationwide championship video games was the norm at Tennessee with orange-decked followers following the Woman Vols all around the nation. Underneath Summitt, the Woman Vols went to 18 Remaining Fours — not counting 4 within the AIAW earlier than the NCAA began its match. They misplaced six nationwide title video games, 4 within the NCAA Event.
All that looks as if distant recollections.
The final Remaining 4 look for Tennessee got here in 2008 — the eighth and closing nationwide championship below Summitt.
Tennessee led the nation in attendance for 19 seasons and averaged a minimum of 10,375 per recreation for 20 straight seasons. The Woman Vols haven’t averaged 10,000 a recreation since 2015-16.
Followers who adopted the Summitt present are older, and profitable new followers means touchdown new stars to observe within the steps of Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings and Candace Parker.
Holly Warlick, Summitt’s trusted assistant, couldn’t do it.
She lasted seven seasons earlier than being fired in March 2019 after a first-round match loss. So Tennessee turned to Harper, contemporary off taking Missouri State to a Candy 16.
Harper has been boosting the expertise on the roster. Justine Pissott, a 6-foot-4 guard from Toms River, New Jersey, and the Eleventh-ranked participant within the nation, is dedicated for subsequent season.
When the Woman Vols climbed again into the highest 10 of The Related Press rankings in December, it was the primary time they’d been there in almost three years. They climbed as excessive as No. 4 and had been projected in late January because the No. 1 seed within the Wichita Area.
Then got here a slew of accidents.
Keyen Inexperienced, a glue participant off the bench, tore an ACL. Then Jordan Horston, their main scorer and rebounder, broke her left elbow in February. Tennessee had already misplaced sophomore Marta Suarez, an All-SEC freshman final season, in October.
“Individuals who don’t do that for a residing can’t perceive how exhausting it’s to lose gamers like they’ve misplaced gamers as persistently down the stretch of a season, the place you’ve bought to remodel numerous stuff,” stated Belmont coach Bart Brooks, praising Harper for not permitting the accidents to utterly derail the season.
Sorensen stated she noticed Tennessee as a Remaining 4 group earlier than the accidents.
“It’s superior to see Kellie and that group come collectively to get to the Candy 16,” Sorensen stated. “That’s tough shedding that many gamers, then rallying. It’s actually exhausting to win in March, they usually’ve executed it.”
Tennessee did stagger down the stretch, profitable simply 5 of its final 12 video games. However the general season garnered the Woman Vols a No. 4 seed and two video games in Knoxville with orange in all places.
Now, again within the Candy 16, there is no such thing as a escaping Tennessee’s historical past and Summitt’s ever-present shadow over this system.
A Summitt statue is a well-liked picture spot on the nook throughout from Thompson-Boling Enviornment with massive images of nationwide champs within the hallways inside and orange and white banners of these titles hanging from the rafters.
And that’s simply nice with Harper, a Tennessee native, who at all times pulled for the Woman Vols throughout her teaching stops at Western Carolina, North Carolina State and Missouri State.
No one on Tennessee’s present roster has performed in a Candy 16 recreation, so these Woman Vols are leaning closely on that historical past and Harper’s expertise.
“For us, that’s simply massive,” junior heart Tamari Key stated of Harper’s match success. “Understanding she’s been there and he or she is aware of what it’s like and what it must seem like and the work that should go in behind the scenes to have the ability to obtain that.”