Mike Siroky's SEC Notebook: The Cream Is Rising to the Top

By Mike Siroky

The Southeastern conference of women's basketball is 13-10 against Associated Press Top 25 non-conference teams; a 6-5 record versus Top 10.

The conference overall is 145-39 (.788) vs. America, with a winning record against every other conference.

Tennessee has the third-best RPI in America, South Carolina No. 5 and Kentucky No. 9. No other conference has three in the Top 10.

This is brought up because South Carolina is at UConn this coming Monday, which will likely settle the No. 1 ranking until and into the NCAAs.

The conference week started on a Monday with three ranked teams scheduled for cablecast, No. 12 Texas A&M at No. 1 South Carolina and No. 18 Mississippi State at Auburn.

The midweek challenge game was No. 6 Tennessee at No. 12 Kentucky.

Kentucky fell to Tennessee at home and had to bounce back against a faltering (but still ranked at the time) Georgia, also in Lexington.

The other winnable games for the ranked teams had South Carolina in its third game of the week (they had just had a week off) at Ole Miss, Auburn at A&M and State (also in its third game of the week) at Tennessee.

UT and SC do not meet until Feb. 26 at SC.

It looks like they will decide who is unbeaten in conference regular season and if SC is unbeaten for two seasons at home (the same result, really).

UT has the only two centers who can almost play with the Gamecocks so it will come down to the guards and SC’s Tiffany Mitchell is the returning co-player of the year in conference.

With a month to go before the conference post-season tournament, it looks as if the order of finish is all but decided.

Those locked to make the NCAAs are, of course, SC and UT as Sweet 16 qualifiers at home, A&M for its entire season body of work (and already at 22 wins), though not necessarily at home for the opening rounds, then ranked teams A&M and Kentucky.

Yes, Georgia is ranked but has taken too many hits, though coach Andy Landers himself may be enough to become the sixth team.

A&M and UK, if they finish strongly, could be in the 16 mix. But how many leagues would get those home games.

Left out looks to be Vanderbilt, despite what you may have read elsewhere on the 'Net.

Outside possibility is Ole Miss, though the Rebs would have to win a couple in the SEC tournament to merit national recognition.

Of course, someone could always surprise in the SEC tournament; that has yet to happen in the women's game.

•South Carolina wore down A&M for its 27th straight home court win and then blasted Alabama.

That ties UConn for the active streak. SC is at UConn on Monday to decide who is No. 1 for the rest of the season.

A&M was in contention for the start of the 79-61 game, but . . .

"I thought we came out just really focused at the task at hand,” said SC coach Dawn Staley.

“Of course, we want to go inside and I thought we did that. I thought Tiffany Mitchell just played with an incredible amount of focus on both sides of the ball. I think she led us.

"Khadijah Sessions did an excellent job picking the ball up and pressuring their point guard, disrupting them at the start of the game.

"When we are defending like that, I know it creates offense from our defense. It was great to see us do that."

The Gamecocks hit 24-of-30 from the line as the Aggies fouled in order to try and regain ball control.

“I never relax,” Staley said. “I’m used to seeing our players perform not-so-well there. It’s always a tremendous thing for this particular team to shoot 80 percent from the free-throw line.”

A&M coach Gary Blair, effusive as ever, praised the crowd, the atmosphere and then, in his usual row of praising women’s basketball in general, “Do you see how far y’all have come?”

The Gamecocks, then at 19 wins, used aggressive defense to generate one big run in each half to distance the Aggies and won the rebounds battle, 43-29 ( 32 defensive boards on 44 missed Aggie shots).

Alaina Coates had her eighth double-double of the season with 12 points and 11 rebounds, while freshman A'ja Wilson narrowly missed one with a team-high 18 points and nine boards.

Trailing 24-20 with 7:57 to play in the half, the Gamecocks' defense locked down to launch a 14-0 run behind a 5:00 scoring drought for the Aggies.

South Carolina forced a series of turnovers and capitalized in transition to put Texas A&M on its heels.

The second half opened much like the first, the Aggies living outside on jumpers and the Gamecocks struggling. A&M kept the viewers watching by getting back in the game, 40-38 with 16:47 to play.

South Carolina had the lead back to double digits with just fewer than 14 minutes to play. Wilson's game-high 18 points put her in double figures for the fifth time in seven SEC contests.

Coates and Wilson each hit 6-of-8 from the line. Tiffany Mitchell scored 16, 6-of-6 from the line with three assists.

A&M had lost two in a row, three of five, all to ranked teams. In any other conference, they might be dominating. But the SEC is not any conference, where they languished at 4-3.

A&M hit just 32.4 percent from the field in the second half, having no inside answer.

There were 13,546 witnesses, the third-largest of the season the sixth times in nine home games this season with more than 10,000.

A little over two seasons ago, Staley had taken to publicly thank the fans for support as she grew the program. She does not do that anymore.

Against Alabama, the Gamecocks won each half by more than 12 in the 85-54 walkover.

It was SC's 20th win. "It's just another step on the road," Staley said

"I think we do want to enjoy the journey because it's a place that we've never been. At the same time, this team is just focused on the next challenge. I don't think we're into the record; we're into the next challenge.

"The next challenge is playing at Ole Miss - a pretty good Ole Miss basketball team - and taking care of possibly getting another win on the road."

Wilson scored a game-high 17and Coates notched her ninth double-double of the season with 14 points and a game-high 10 rebounds while also blocking five. Coates recorded 10 double-doubles last season on her way to claiming SEC Freshman of the Year honors.

A 14-0 run as part of a stretch of 11 straight made baskets early decided it.
Wilson went 7-of-9 from the floor and scored nine of her game-high 17 in just five first-half minutes.

The freshman also grabbed five rebounds and matched a career best with three assists.

Coates posted a solid 4-of-5 performance from the free throw line on her way to a double-double.

The Gamecock bench outscored its starters 48-37. It's the 11th time this season the bench has outscored the starting five.

Of 11 players, 10 scored at least five points and nine grabbed at least one rebound.

Perhaps nothing says so much about the SEC as does this stat: Ole Miss is 1-13 against ranked teams.

That tells you an otherwise competitive group has trouble becoming even the sixth-best (and therefore into the NCAAs) in the conference.

Next, freshman Bianca Cuevas, all 5-6 of her, scored 21, her best so far, as No. 1 South Carolina recovered from a slow start for another road walkover, 77-59, at Ole Miss.

"She's instant offense," SC coach Dawn Staley said. "She's always finding gaps in the defense and we felt we could utilize her in a way that could push Ole Miss back on their heels. It allowed us to open the game up and play really fast.

"We're going to take everybody's best punch," Staley said. "That's what we did. We kept our composure and let the game come to us. We know the game is not won in the first five minutes."

South Carolina's Tiffany Mitchell and A'ja Wilson each scored 11 and Elem Ibiam and Alaina Coates had 10 apiece. The Gamecocks' backups — led by Cuevas — combined for 43 points.

Ole Miss is eliminated from the conference race with five losses and must find six other wins to get to the magic NCAA 20. Erika Sisk and Shandricka Sessom both scored 12.

Rebounding ace Tia Faleru had 13 rebounds. But she also had four fouls with more than 16 minutes left in the game trying to wage the inside battle against two centers.

Without her, the Rebels didn't have much chance to stop South Carolina's inside game. The Gamecocks knew it, continually feeding the post for easy layups.

"They're big, they're physical and they're taxing on you inside," Ole Miss coach Matt Insell said. "They're hard to score on around the basket because they're so big."

•Tennessee won at Kentucky by one, 73-72, but that is all it takes to keep a team undefeated in the toughest league in the land and knock the Kats out of conference contention with three losses, including this crucial one at home.

A streak that covered 2,558 days came down to 4.3 seconds. No. 6 Tennessee led No. 10 Kentucky by a single point, but possession was out of bounds to the Wildcats, underneath their own basket.

The first pass was tipped away by Andraya Carter. 3.6 seconds to go. UK called it last time out. The Memorial Coliseum crowd, 7,407, the most this season, roared.

A shot up by the Wildcats was blocked by Jordan Reynolds out of bounds.

Another pass in, another shot, another block, this one from Carter.

The Lady Vols had not won at a Top 10 opponent since Jan. 28, 2008. It again underlines how tough it is in the SEC. It becomes the signature win so far, but UT at SC is yet to come.

"It's been a struggle on the road for us against Top 10 teams," senior Cierra Burdick said. "I think this is a huge statement of how hard we work and the heart that we have."

Coach Holly Warlick is more mindful of the old school one-game-at-a-time, with different players in different situations making comparisons difficult.

"We didn't talk about that," Warlick said, "We just talked about our game against Kentucky. We focused on Kentucky and how they play and what they do, that was our main concern."

Izzy Harrison made herself into Kentucky's main concern and the Wildcats found no answer, particularly in the game's waning moments.

The senior became the newest member of Tennessee's 1,000-point club with a team-high 19 points and 10 rebounds. She already was the league player-of-the-week coming in.

Down the stretch, she scored 11 of Tennessee's final 17 points. Neither team had a lead better than six, which is how many UT was at halftime.

"She works before she gets the ball and I thought she did a great job of that tonight," Warlick said. "She didn't get frustrated. She was solid and did the work she had to do before getting the ball and got open and we found a way to get her the ball."

"We were a lot more open in the second half than in the first half," Harrison said. "Kentucky's defense is non-stop. The longer we went, everyone got gassed a little bit and we were able to apply that much more pressure to get open and make the extra pass."

Harrison's final bucket came with 1:24 left. It gave UT a four-point edge. From there, it was all about the defense. Makayla Epps hit a 3 with 1:16 to go and that set up the frantic finish. She led UK with 23.

"I was not very calm," Warlick said of the final sequence. "It boils down to getting stops. I'm proud of us getting the ball and getting a stop."

But.

"We've hung our hat on defense all season," Burdick said. "This is the position that we want to be in. There was no doubt in my mind that we were going to win that game."

UK coach Matt Mitchell said, "We didn’t play great defense in the second half and so we got beat. It’s a tough one to lose.

"They were able to turn us over 19 times with a switching defense and so that’s an issue we have to address. I don’t know how you take a positive out of tonight. You have a chance to win in your building and you just don't find a way to win. We won’t feel good about that.”

This was the ninth game against a Top 25 team this season, fourth in the past five games, good for the second-best RPI in the nation.

No. 6 Tennessee remained perfect against No. 17 Mississippi State, beating the Bulldogs for the 36th consecutive time, 79-67.

“It was a great game; I am sure it was fun to watch, two athletic teams,” said UT coach Holly Warlick.

“I am really proud of our team for playing as hard as they could. Could we have done some things better? Absolutely. But we stayed the course, stayed positive and got a great win.”

The Lady Vols hit 19 wins. Tennessee has won all 13 home games and 17 overall in a row at home dating to February 20, 2014. The Lady Vols have also won 16 consecutive games against SEC opponents.

Senior Cierra Burdick earned conference player of the week honors with a career-high 24 points, 9-of-15 from the floor. She also had a season-high six assists and eight rebounds.

“She was huge today,” said Warlick.

“You are going against very athletic guards, they took out our point and two players so she had to bring the ball up. She was so focused today, I think at times she lets her game, she gets really inside of herself. I though today she took great shots, she had six assists, I just think she played solid.

“When she takes the shots and gets the looks that she got and worked to get the ball, she is going to shoot a high percentage. She was key for us. She was upset she missed one free throw. She got in the huddle and she was so positive to keep our team together, rally around each other.

"Everything was positive. That is what you need from a player. We weren't doing something really well and she stepped in and gathered her troops together and kept the positive. That was huge for us."

For the second game in a row, a Lady Vol scored her 1,000th career point. This time it was Bashaara Graves. Her 17 gave her 1,001, free-throws with 16 seconds left reaching the milestone.

Izzy Harrison did it last week and senior Ariel Massengale will do it next. She is nine short after scoring eight in this one.

Harrison scored 11 and grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds for her sixth double-double of the season and 30th of her career.

The Lady Vols shot a season-best 56.9 from the floor, besting their mark of 55.6 vs. LSU on Jan. 22.

Mississippi State, off to its best start in school history, fell to 22-3 overall now have fallen back to three league losses.

The Bulldogs had a four-game win streak; having lost three of the past seven games after starting 18-0. Such is life for the newest riser in the toughest league in the land.

UT made 11 of its first 12 field goal attempts in the second half to take command.

UT has the week off before going to Gainesville for its only game of the week.

Mississippi state coach Vic Schaefer knows this is their crunch time. They next play Texas A&M and then are at No. 10 Kentucky.

“They are awfully good,” he said. “They're hard to deal with and we just couldn't guard them.

"We made quite a few mistakes today and that's not taking anything away from Tennessee.

"(Burdick, Graves, Harrison) are a hard trio to guard and I'm matching that with freshmen and a sophomore with two of them with a senior in the other spot.

It was a good basketball game and I think we played similar to where we're ranked and where we are in the league."

"It certainly will be an opportunity, but I walk out of here thinking 'Hey, we're pretty good!' We probably are a Top-20 basketball team and I don't think many people would disagree with that.

" We're the only team in the league that hasn't had a bye yet and we need it. My kids need a break. It's been a long grind and we've played 25 games, winning 22 of them. I'm awfully proud of my team.”

ROAD TRIP: Tennessee scheduled its first international summer tour since 2003, to Italy in August to play three games in nine-days.

The Lady Vols will see Venice and its famous canals, Florence and its Accademia Gallery, Pisa and the Leaning Tower, and Rome and its Colosseum and Vatican before departing from Rome.

All 11 non-senior players on this year's roster will be eligible to make the trip, as will Tennessee's incoming 2015-16 freshmen, Te'a Cooper and MeMe Jackson.

Included will be then-eligible transfer Diamond DeShields the 2013-14 Atlantic Coast Conference freshman of the year.

She is attending classes at Tennessee and will have three years of eligibility. She will be quite the addition next season and will now have had actual game experience.

Under NCAA rules, she is practicing with the team all year.

•State started its week with a win at Auburn, won at home against Vanderbilt, then had the road challenge at UT.

A double-double by Victoria Vivians let them lead by as many as 21 points in the second half of the 59-48 win over Auburn. It didn’t help Auburn that senior Hasina Muhammad, at nearly 10 points per game, was off for that previously reported one-game suspension for throwing a punch at Alabama.

“I am pleased with how we responded to end the first half (with a 15-2 run) after we were down seven,” said Schaefer. “We are on the road with a young team.

"You don’t know how they will respond. We just had to stop turning it over. We could defend them on the half court.

“We got some great looks once we stopped turning the ball over. Really pleased with our effort on out of bounds plays. Our defense really created some good offense for us.”

State keeps piling on the wins, then at 21, with only two league losses for the best start in program history and that allows them hang on to the Top 20 spot.

Vivians’ 19 points and 10 rebounds led, with teammate Martha Alwal scorting 15 in the second half. She also had seven of her eight rebounds then.

“Really pleased with Martha’s performance on the boards,” Schaefer said. “Victoria got a double-double and that is really big for a freshman. We are looking forward to being back home in the Hump .

" We love playing in the Hump. We really need our students out. These kids deserve it. We have a fun team to watch.”

That’s the mantra Dawn Staley, as mentioned above, used to use as she built her program. Maybe it is in the coaches’ secret handbook.

“We are just continually repeating ourselves over and over again,” Auburn coach Terri Williams-Flournoy said. “We can’t turn the ball over 23 times, which gave them 25 points, and give up 17 offensive rebounds. It’s just very hard to win a basketball game giving up those type of numbers.”

Playing before a season-best crowd of 5,056, rode the momentum of a fast start to a 69-44 win against Vanderbilt.

It must be noted that at least one online "genius" still had Vanderbilt in NCAA contention in his bracketology effort. That's looking for future rewards based on past performance. It doesn't work in the stock market and it likely will not work here.

The crowd was the sixth largest in Humphrey Coliseum history and the largest State has had as witnesses – home or road – this season. The Bulldogs have now attracted a school-record 50,438 this season at home.

MSU won its fourth straight conference game to improve 22-2 overall and 7-2 in conference play. State matched last season’s win total and claimed its most conference wins in half a decade.The points differential matched State’s largest margin of victory in the series.

“Awfully proud of our kids tonight,” Schaefer said. “The second half was awfully good offensively. We were good on defense all night.

"We played with a lot of purpose and knowing where we needed to be. Our entire team was dialed in on that end. It makes all the difference in the world when kids make shots.

“We had kids step up and make shots tonight. We talk about playing with passion and playing with a purpose. We talk about entertaining. That crowd was loud tonight.”

Vivians, the SEC’s top freshman scorer, led with 20 points – 16 in the second half. It was her seventh game with 20 or more points this season and second in SEC play.

Martha Alwal added 14 points, six rebounds and two blocks.

Alwal became the third player in SEC history to hit 1,000 career points, 900 career rebounds and 300 career blocked shots.

Kendra Grant came off the bench to hit her first two 3s in a 12-point night.

“Coach tells me to come off the bench and fix what is broken and, if it is not broken, to keep things going,” Grant said. “My job is to bring some energy to the team so that is what I tried to do.”

The Bulldogs stretched the lead late with an 11-0 run – highlighted by five points from LaKaris Salter.

“We have a definite home-court advantage now,” Schaefer said. “The crowd was great. They were into the game. The building was loud. It got even louder when we put the subs in. It means a lot to these players to have that kind of recognition.”

•Georgia started with a hit off-court as junior guard Shacobia Barbee needed season-ending surgery onto repair a fracture of her right distal fibula from the game game at Tennessee.

Recovery includes six weeks of immobilization followed by a slow return to activity.

She had been Georgia's leading scorer and was easily projected to the all-conference teams in preseason Last season, Barbee became the first player in program history to lead in scoring, rebounds, assists and steals.

Kentucky fell out of the Top 10, to No. 11, but got well against Georgia, 80-72, by holding the ‘Dwags scoreless in the final 97 seconds during a 10-0 deciding run. The Kats needed a stop like that to revive themselves. They remain plateaued with three league losses.

Jennifer O'Neill led four Kentucky players in double digits. Career-bests by Tiara Griffin (23) and Marjorie Butler (13) kept Georgia in it until they ran out of gas.

UK coach Matthew Mitchell said of O’Neill: “Well, it’s interesting. You may think she’s supremely confident at all times and I don’t know if it's a lack of focus, (but) in the middle portion of the game, I just thought she was not into it.

"So, I don’t know if her focus goes in and out. But I think at the end of the game, in this game today, she was really able to lock in and focus and correct the mistakes she was making because she started playing some good defense as well.

“She has the toughness to shake off some bad results when you’re in that position. (I’m) really, really proud of her and we needed her today. It was a big 3.”

"I thought where they did the most damage was on the offensive boards,” Georgia coach Andy Landers said, his team at No. 22. "They killed us there.

"Our guards have got the rebound the basketball for us to be successful and today we got hammered by both guards and forwards. Their guards were chasing down balls and rebounding them before they went out of bounds while we watched. There were some turnovers that were huge, but the offensive rebounds killed us."

Kentucky outrebounded the Lady Bulldogs 43-36 and had 19 offensive rebounds to Georgia's 23

The Lady Bulldogs will return home to host top-ranked South Carolina on Thursday. SC has been selling this game as a fan bus travel game, so they will bring some of their own crowd.

•A&M welcomed in Auburn after the SC wakeup call.
Nothing like playing Auburn to help end a two-game losing streak.

The Aggies extended their home winning streak to 14 in a 78-45 win, keeping Auburn stalled without a conference win.

Texas A&M holds on at No. 14, one of those key NCAA spots for a first-round pair of games in the big tournament.

“We needed this game,” said coach Gary Blair.

“ We’ve needed this game. It’s been so long since I’ve gone into halftime and didn’t have to yell at them or change defenses. It’s been a long time. I think our kids responded.

“When Jordan Jones just has that leadership- some of it’s quiet, some of it’s swag. That’s what she had today. The Courtneys (Walker and Williams) each shot better than 50 percent.

“That’s what we have to have from both of them. This was just a ball game where we knew we had to be up. We’ve been on the road and now we’re fixing to go back on the road.

"Our bench played extremely well. Sometimes when we have blowout games, it’s shoot first, pass second. They played with a ‘We’ not an ‘I’.”

The Aggies won their 17th with a 17-4 run in the nine minutes and led 39-17 at halftime.

It was all happy time after that, as A&M shot 55.4 percent the second half.
Guard Courtney Williams said, “ I think it was a great way to get back on track after two losses. The way we started off, getting our bench in getting them some playing time getting them some experiences.

"The last two games were not good because we didn't execute. But this game I think we really executed.

“First half against South Carolina we executed but then it kind of died down. I don’t think if it was because we were fatigue or what it was but I think this game really gave us some confidence going further into conference. Telling us that we can finish third or fourth in conference.

“We had a lecture meeting yesterday telling each other that we really needed energy and that we need to pick it up. Whatever it was, we need to come together as a team. Because we are one of the best teams in the country and everybody thinks that.

“ We just weren't showing it so I think we need to show that and start off with energy just like we did. Get the bench in and get them some experience. And they just bring us energy off the bench.”

A&M has two winnable games next, at Missouri and against Arkansas, two second-tier conference teams.

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