Mike Siroky’s SEC Report: One Survivor Among Day Two Trio

By Mike Siroky

The best conference in women’s basketball, the Southeastern, launched the final three if its seven selected teams in the NCAA eliminations, all on the road.

Kentucky won. Auburn and Tennessee did not. None of it was unexpected.

First-day winners Mississippi State, South Carolina, Texas A&M all try for the Sweet 16 at home on Sunday. Missouri  also advanced.

Here’s Day 2:

Kentucky (25-7) 82, Princeton (22-19) 77

Like everyone else except Mississippi State, No. 6 seed Kentucky started a new win streak with a small opportunity of six possible games left. 

The reality is each game can be the last for his seniors.

Opening with the Ivy League champ did not mean one team is smarter. It did mean both are on the road at Raleigh, N.C. hoping to get to the Greensboro Sweet 16.

Kentucky finished 17th in the nation, the fourth SEC team rated nationally, up one spot on the conference strength despite being one and done in the league tournament.

This one was about recovering some NCAA moxie as Kentucky had missed the previous elimination tournament. 

Princeton came in on a 12-game winning streak

UK had 15 days between games.

This is all  new, of course, for national rookie or the year Rhyne Howard. 

She and senior guard Maci Morris have been named Women’s Basketball Coaches Association All-Region honorees and are now considered finalists for the All-America team which is announced at the Final Four.

Princeton led by nine early, but UK cut into that by the end of the first. 

The Tigers  led by four at the half. 

UK coach Matthew Morrison had a plan, which included a 9-0 run and a 28-15 quarter.

The Kat defense was taking control. 

Often, Princeton had to start its set on the inner lip of the 3-point arc because of the pressure.

With 5:21 to go, Taylor Murray stole an inbounds and made the layup for an 11-point lead. 

UK breathed easier from then on even if it was all mind games in the final minutes with fouls, times out and clock burning.

Princeton lost two starters to fouls.

Morris scored 19 with three 3s.

 “When I see them go in, it just gets me going,” Morris said. “It felt really good since I’d been struggling a bit the past few games.”

Taylor Murray also scored 19. 

Murray scored 15 with four 3s. UK scored nine 3s, hitting half of the attempts. UK lost rebounds by a dozen and it did not matter. The 9-0 run to close the third did matter.

Kentucky, a six seed, plays host N.C.State, a three seed, on Monday.

"They wanted to stay positive and know that they can make some noise here in the tournament," Mitchell said.

" We're excited to advance in the tournament. 

“Very proud of our team for the victory. 

I'd like to first say really compliment Princeton -- what an outstanding team they have, what a great season they have had. 

 

"They are well-coached and played hard and were as prepared as anyone we've seen all season and it was a real, real tough game, which we're very proud to win against that opponent we have much respect for.

" I thought our players came out in the third quarter and and really, really did a great job getting control of the game.

“ I thought we had a good halftime session and just so proud of our two seniors stepping up and leading the way and leading us to a great victory in this NCAA tournament.”

Taylor Murray said the long break was just fine.

" Um, no, I didn't think we had any rust. One thing we talked about was not to be very nervous at all. But we hit some shots, we were able to just pick it up and just do what  Kentucky does normally."

Maci Morri agrees with what Taylor said. 

“Princeton is a really good team offensively just executing. They're really smart, they know how to read screens and stuff like that. 

“So we just had to kind of adapt to that and make sure that we were playing our defense and go from there.

"It  felt really good. When I see them go in like that, it just just gets me going. So it felt really good since I've been struggling a little bit this past few games.

"Jaida Roper  is like a really good spark person for us. She brings that energy whenever we need hustle plays. We need those hustle plays to really get us a lead-in to the second half. 

"So she brung that energy for us. Um, she made plays for us. Whenever she needed a defensive stop, she was there for us. So she is a tremendous part of our team and when she brings energy we all can feed off her."

They drew 2,769.

 

 BYU  (26-6) 73, Auburn (22-10) 64

Slowly, coach Terri Williams-Flournoy has built a national footprint without many steps in any NCAA tournament.

 A couple of NCAA wins is the next major steps. 

They opened at Stanford against  No. 7 seed BYU.

What is motivation is they were not one-and-done in the SEC tournament. Then they lost on a shot with five seconds left to Texas A&M, a second two-point loss in the series.

“(It was) definitely a winnable game,”  Williams-Flournoy said. "We turned them over 26 times. Offense was the problem. We didn't score enough points off those turnovers. The offense in the second half was bad."

That is what  this 10th seed worked on in the off week, that coach’s dream of concentrating on her own team, without knowing whom the NCAA would select for them to go against, which turned out to be BYU.

Now was intense game-planning and inhaling knowledge about the Cougars.

“I’m so happy for our team," Williams-Flournoy said. “I'm very excited to be heading out to California; it's going to be great. We don’t really know too much about BYU at this point; we'll get the film and get to work.

“The one thing we’ve been talking about since the start of the season is building a ‘Team of Excellence.’ 

“We didn't want to talk about going to the NCAA Tournament. We knew if we built a ‘Team of Excellence,’ doing the right things, getting wins, that would get us to the NCAA Tournament.”

According to the NCAA, Auburn and Tennessee were among the final teams selected in a group of seven, both on strength of schedule in the toughest conference in America. Indiana eked out the difference, by the way, in what eliminated Arkansas.

All week, the Cougars practiced man defense against the Auburn sets. they switched it up to zone and that move paid off.

BYU’s Brenna Chase scored 19, with seven assists and three blocked shots.2

Shaylee Gonzales scored 17 and Caitlyn Alldredge 14 as the West Coast Conference champion Cougars (26-6) overcame Auburn's in-your-face, pressure-at-every-chance defense by playing its own stellar D -- getting four blocks from 6- 7 Sara Hamson.

A focused halftime chat helped BYU take charge.

"We talked about not fouling and rebounding. We talked about where the openings would be and we came out and executed right away," Chase said. "We were getting a lot of looks in transition in the third quarter."

The Cougars hit 7 of their first 10 shots out of halftime and used an 11-0 run in the third to take control, while Auburn continued to struggle shooting and missed eight in a row during a costly stretch.

“Their quickness in person is a lot quicker than it is on tape. We worked all week on playing them man. We figured we could contain them,” BYU coach Jeff Judkins said. 

“But things change, especially when Sara picked up her second foul. That forced me to do some things I didn’t want to do. So we tried zone and they struggled with it, so we were going to stay with it until they started hitting shots."

Janiah McKay had 19 points going for Auburn in her final college game. This wasn't how McKay wanted to finish her career, and her legs started cramping. 

All season she was determined to get back to the big March stage after last season's miss. This was the Tigers' third NCAA berth in her four years.

McKay got her team on the board with an early 3 then her team struggled until she scored with a driving layup at the 3:40 mark after Auburn went more than 2 minutes without a basket.

BYU had its own scoring struggles until getting on track after the break.

Auburn jumped into the passing lanes, crashed the offensive boards to create extra chances and hit the floor for loose balls in out hustling BYU in the opening quarter. 

The Tigers stayed close because of their defense when the shots didn't fall, getting 14 steals.

"Against a zone you have to knock down shots and we stood around a little and the offense became stagnant," Williams-Flournoy said.

It was another balanced performance by the Cougars, who have multiple 3-point threats as well as Hamson in the middle.

BYU pulled off an 82-68 upset of favored-but-injury-plagued Gonzaga in the WCC tournament championship game. 

The Cougars are back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016.

Both teams came out cold from the floor, 2 of 7 by BYU and Auburn's 2 for 12.

Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, a former BYU star, sat just off the court near the Cougars bench while Ruthie Bolton -- who played at Auburn and for Hall of Fame Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer on the gold-medal winning 1996 Olympic team at the Atlanta Games -- was on the other side in Maples Pavilion.

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson arrived to watch the second game, with little sister Anna Wilson a reserve guard for Stanford.

Auburn shot 2-for-13 from deep in the first half and wound up 4-of -27 while hitting 32 percent overall from the field. They drew 3,456.

 

UCLA 89 (21-12), Tennessee 77 (19-13)

UCLA and UT are two legendary coaches with a connection back to the creation of NCAA competition. 

The Bruins won the 1978 AIAW title.

 Former UT All-American Nikki Fargas was a coach there for three seasons. Billie Moore, another hall of fame coach, was so close to Pat Head she was among the final clique escorting her on her final journey, living in Knoxville as a caregiver.

Cori Close is the current coach. They lost in the Pac 12 semifinals.

The ESPN idiocy of releasing the brackets early impacted Close at a practice, but she used it to tell the team of the urgency of knowing who they would play and win.

“It actually brought us together,” she said. “They’re still Tennessee. Tennessee was never on the bubble. Holly is a good friend of mine.

“We know in March it’s how you put your talent together in a synergistic method.”

Sophomore forward Michaela Onyenwere is her leading scorer, 18.2, and rebounder 8.2. But senior Kennedy Burke is not far behind, 15.2 points per game. There are two other seniors.

Tennessee was self-inflicted from, the start.

 Bad shots, worse defense, no one with killer instinct. Whether Warlick chooses to continue and if  everyone does not transfer away, this team will once again have three straight wonderful recruiting classes next year.

When center Cheridine Green joined Westbrook with two first-quarter fouls it was all but over.

 A 19-8 first and a  31-23 fourth were enough. Alleged leader Westbrook scored six in 36 minutes. Rennia Davis scored 21. 

The UT bench won, 23-6, and UCLA had eight more turnovers. They erased a 17-point deficit.

.

Sure, Tennessee rallied to take a lead of three points with five minutes to go but that only woke up the Bruins for a 10-0 run and obviously a 12-2 finish. 

They finish with back-to-back losses.

“I was really proud of our young ladies,” Warlick said.  “They fought.”

 Already looking ahead to next season, Mimi  Collins said it is all bout fixing the mental mistakes over the summer.”

Warlick agrees, saying it will be all about  consistency.