AUBURN—For most of the night it didn’t look like the Lady Vols would walk away from this one unscathed. They trailed the entire first half and a good portion of the second half, but used 18 second half points from Meighan Simmons to comeback from a 12 point deficit.

Simmons led all scorers with 29 points.
Photo by Reed Carringer

A clearly exhausted Warlick said of the game, “We found a way to win. It wasn’t pretty for us.”  While not perfect, the Tennessee victory did come over an Auburn team that had yet to drop a game at home. With the win, the Lady Vols moved to 5-0 in conference play.

The first half was a struggle. Tennessee was completely out of rhythm at times and couldn’t get anything going in the paint. Auburn looked like the better and more determined team in the first 20 minutes. “We were flat and Auburn had a lot to do with how we were playing. They were aggressive and we weren’t,” Lady Vol head coach Holly Warlick said.”We can’t do that. Somehow we puled it out when Simmons hit a couple of 3’s and we had some big stops.”

Simmons finished the night with 29 points on 10-14 shooting. The junior guard has scored 56 points the last two games. While Simmons played perhaps her best game of the year, Isabelle Harrison and Bashaara Graves struggled in the paint. The duo managed just 11 points; well short of their combined average (24.2 points per game).

Though Tennessee’s star forwards had a rough night, head coach Holly Warlick was more concerned with her team’s habit of falling behind.

“My question to our team: Why to do wait until our backs are against the wall to make defense our priority? That’s a challenge with this team and we’ll continue to work on it.”

For the Lady Vols to play deep into March, they’ll have to answer that challenge with more consistent defensive effort.

Up Next: The Lady Vols return home to play Alabama in the “We Back Pat” game at 1 p.m. Sunday. TV: CSS