Kentucky resumes control of SEC race with one game to go

Every

Game

Counts ...

Except in the whacky world of the NCAA selection committee, every speed bump in the Southeastern Conference regular season absolutely means as much as the final games of the season.

The aggregate leads to the title. Fresh bodies and un-sprained knees are likely to help decide the regular-season title early. Nerves – or lack of them – help decide it late.

In the next-to last game of the regular season, the league leaders, Kentucky and Tennessee, were each at home.

Kentucky won an amazing game of zigs and zags. Tennessee lost to yet another team it has usually whipped, and again, at home.

The outcomes untied the conference lead. Kentucky owns all tiebreakers and leads by one with one to go, making the Wildcats de facto league champs for the first time in decades. Tennessee will spin into next week's SEC tournament in Nashville with every game up for grabs.

Tennessee has Senior Day at home left, on Sunday, Feb. 26, when they will host Florida. Kentucky had its home finale of the school’s best-ever league season and, on Sunday, goes to Mississippi State, which will be celebrating its own Senior Night. That would be emotional enough for the Bulldog seniors even without the added farewell to multi-decade coach Sharon Fanning-Otis, who announced her retirement last week.

Summing Up the Midweek Results: Games of Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012

• South Carolina 50 @ Kentucky 53
• Arkansas 72 @ Tennessee 71
• Ole Miss 52 @ Georgia 87
• Mississippi State 45 @ Florida 79
• Alabama 40 @ Auburn 81
• Vanderbilt 66 @ LSU 69

Looking Back at the Midweek Highlights: Games of Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012  

South Carolina 50 @ KENTUCKY 53: The Wildcats showed their championship form, achieving a 17-0 home winning streak and a school-record 12 conference wins with their 53-50 win over visiting South Carolina. The victory marked the third season in school history that the Wildcats have gone undefeated at home, and with the win, Kentucky maintained its status as the highest-ranked team in the SEC.

A'dia Mathies, the steadiest Kentucky player, sent her senior classmates away in style, with 21 points, six more than her seasonaverage, and six rebounds. Bria Goss put even more heft behind her argument for SEC Freshman-of-the-Year honors, adding 14 points for the Wildcats (23-5, 12-3 Southeastern Conference), who set a school record for SEC wins in a season with the victory.

In a great game to watch, if not to coach, neither side led by more than six points until late in the second half, when Kentucky went on a 9-2 run, building a nine-point lead (48-39) with 5:05 remaining. But South Carolina answered with an 11-0 run of its own.

With 42 seconds to go it was a two-point game. Megan Conright sealed the win for Kentucky, knocking down with two free throws with four seconds left, as some 7.062 fans roared in approval.

For more than 100 straight games, the Wildcats have forced double-digit turnovers and this night was no different as the Gamecocks coughed up 21. Senior La'Keisha Sutton scored 14 points, and Ashley Bruner posted 13 points and 11 rebounds for the Gamecocks, who fell to 20-8, 9-6 with the loss.

“I am really proud of the effort our kids gave and I have tremendous respect for South Carolina,” said Kentucky coach Matt Mitchell, who emphasized his pride in defending home court.

“We talked about it in the press conference before the game of how important I think it is,” he said. “I don’t put a lot of importance on a lot of stats. I’m not a big stats person. But I’m telling you, to me, that’s a really big accomplishment. There is no other team in our conference who went undefeated at home. It’s just a remarkable accomplishment playing the teams that we played.”

Mitchell also praised his superstar, Mathies.

“Well, we needed it so bad. They were putting so much pressure on her and they weren’t guarding other people. We just didn’t have a lot of other people step up early," Mitchell stated.

“I was so proud of her. They gave her a lot of trouble tonight. They double-teamed her a lot. They sent two people to her. We were trying to play her at power forward and they recognized that and they knew the people they didn’t want to guard.

“It was good that she was aggressive," Mitchell continued. "The big play was when they tried to press us and we attacked and laid it up there. That was a huge play because we were struggling to score in the half-court."

The Wildcats head to Starkville, hoping to nail down the championship outright at Mississippi State on Sunday. With Thursday's win, the Wildcats are now a game ahead of the Lady Vols, who lost to Arkansas on Thursday. That means Kentucky has clinched at least a tie for the regular-season conference championship, and since they own the tie-breaker over Tennessee, Kentucky also holds the top seed in the upcoming SEC Tournament.

“It wasn’t a real celebratory mood in the locker room,” Mitchell admitted. “We just tried to get them focused now. They have worked so terribly hard. Now we are one game away. They need to control it."

“I just told the team, we have come too far now to let effort be an issue or let confidence be an issue," Mitchell said. "We are a phenomenal basketball team and we need to go prove it in Starkville. It’s a great opportunity for our program. A lot of hard work has gone into it and I’m real proud for these kids. It’s not over; we have to go earn it. Mississippi State is not going to give it to us. We have to go play 40 minutes and get a victory. We are going to work like heck to get that done.”

Kentucky is 8-4 in games decided by 10 points or less this season.

ARKANSAS 72 @ Tennessee 71, OT: In all likelihood, Tennessee will not be in the Top 10 as the season ends; they will definitely not be the top-ranked team in the league.

Coming into Thursday's game, the Lady Vols had already lost two conference games at home this season. Tennessee hadn’t lost a conference game at home since its seniors arrived on campus, and this year's home losses are just another negative forever to be remembered in Knoxville, where South Carolina snapped multiple-decade losing streak earlier this month.

Thursday's loss to the Razorbacks, who had started the conference season as one of the bottom-dwellers of the SEC until mounting a record winning streak to turn things around in recent weeks, marks the third home loss for the Vols this season, an all-time record.

Worse yet, for Tennessee fans, the loss put the Vols, who had pulled themselves into a first-place tie with the Wildcats after last week's "revenge" game, back into second place at 20-8 overall, 11-4 in league play. The best they can do now is hope for a piece of the title if Kentucky stumbles next week in Starkville.

While much of the media focus has been on Tennessee's foibles, the bigger story may be the Arkansas turnaround. After a rocky opening to the conference season that saw the Hogs trapped in the SEC cellar, Arkansas has won 10-of-11 down the stretch, strengthening the Razorbacks' case not only for a bid, but also for a relatively high seed, in the NCAA Tournament, where they are slated to host first-and-second-round games in Little Rock.

Thursday's win over the Vols moves the Razorbacks into a tie with Georgia for third place in the SEC, the Hogs' highest conference finish ever. They had lost 18 straight to the Lady Vols, but on Thursday, for the first time in program history, Arkansas joined South Carolina in snapping a decades-long string of losses in Knoxville.

Though it took overtime to accomplish it, Thursday's Razorback road win marked the highpoint of a record comeback for the program. It also suggests that the outcome of January's meeting between these two teams, which saw Arkansas blown out at home by the Vols, 69-38, may have been something of a fluke.

"These kids came in here believing that they could win this game despite the fact we got beat badly by Tennessee," Arkansas coach Tom Collen said. "The further along we went in the game, the more they believed. They just made a lot of great plays down the stretch to finish it off."

"I think we all definitely wanted to forget about that first game," said Razorback senior Lyndsay Harris, who led all scorers with 20 points. "We know we played bad that game. We are confident in our abilities offensively, and I think we were able to stick shots [in tonight's game]."

No one can fault the Vols for lack of effort in the hotly contested game. The Razorbacks shot a sizzling 57.9 percent from the field in the opening half, and took a 31-26 lead to the lockerroom behind 11 first-half points from Harris, whose individual effort in the opening half of Thursday's game equaled the total first half output of her entire team in January's debacle.

Tennessee stepped up its defense out of the break, while the Razorbacks, who had racked up nine fouls in the opening period, seemed a bit more tentative in the second stanza. With 8:29 remaining in regulation, the Vols had overcome their first-half deficit with a 7-0 run highlighted by an Ariel Massengale lay-up that gave Tennessee a 52-50 lead. Tennessee's Glory Johnson quickly stretched it to 55-50. That five-point advantage would prove to be the Lady Vols' largest lead of the game.

Arkansas battled back over the next five minutes, closing the gap to one (57-56) on a Calli Berna jumper with 2:58 left, and less than a minute later, Lyndsay knocked down a pair from the line to put the Razorbacks back on top, 58-57.

Massengale tied things up again, making one of a pair at the charity stripe, and that's where things stood until, with just under two minutes remaining in regulation, a Kamiko Williams put-back made it 60-58, Tennessee. Less than a minute later, the Vols' Shekinna Stricklen knocked down a short jumper to stretch the Vols' advantage to four points.

But Arkansas's C'eira Ricketts dropped in a lay-up to cut it to 62-60 with 47 seconds to go. Then, with just eight ticks on the clock, the Hogs' Sarah Watkins sliced through traffic to lay in another and force the game to extra minutes.

The Razorbacks led by six (70-64), as Calli Berna's trey sliced the nets with just under two minutes remaining in overtime. But Tennessee senior Shekinna Stricklen mounted a one-woman 5-0 run, answering in kind from the arc, then following that up with a lay-up to make the score 70-69 with just 42 seconds to go in overtime.

As so often seems to happen in tight, intense games of this sort, the stuttering visitors lost it out of bounds on the ensuing possession. Sophomore forward Keira Peak, the player who lost the ball, compounded the error by fouling Stricklen, even though Arkansas still had the lead.

That put Stricklen at the line, with 10 seconds to go and the chance to tie the game or win it. Stricklen missed them both.

Four seconds later, with Tennessee forced to foul, Harris made both of her penalty shots to give Arkansas a 72-69 edge. That also allowed the Razorbacks the option to cut off a potential tying three by intentionally fouling Tennessee's freshman point guard Massengale. She, too, knocked down both to make it once again a one-point game, 72-71, Arkansas.

Not quite. Stricklen took the inbounds pass, raced up court and heaved up a Hail Mary from well behind the half-court line. Remarkably, the ball hit the front of the rim, then rattled in.

Too late. To the bitter disappointment of the crowd of 13,323 mostly Vols' fans, the officials waived off the bucket, ruling that Stricklen had not gotten the shot off in time.

"I have to sink the free throws," Stricklen said, taking responsibility for the loss on herself. "We had a bad first half, but we came back in the second half. We fought. We just had to step up, and we didn't make the free throws in the end."

But despite her missed free throws, Stricklen did her part, leading Tennessee with 17 points and eight rebounds, while classmate Glory Johnson dropped in 13 and pulled down a team-high nine boards -- all of them after the half. Both Tennessee stars were held scoreless and rebound-less by the Razorback defense in the opening half.

"We dug ourselves a hole in the first half," Tennessee game coach Holly Warlick said. "You can't have two of your best players not scoring and not rebounding."

Watkins added 18 points to Harris's 20 for the Razorbacks, while Ricketts chipped in 16, plus a team-high eight rebounds.

The victory moved Arkansas into a tie for third place with Georgia. In the unusual symmetry of the league, the Razorbacks go to South Carolina for the Sunday finisher.

Mississippi 52 @ GEORGIA 87: The Bulldogs also get to close at home where their 51-18 second-half performance Thursday put an exclamation point on their blowout victory over the visiting Rebels, delighting the 3,105 who came out to see it.

For those who hate math, that means the game was well within reach after the first 20 minutes, with Georgia on top, but by just 36-34. But after intermission, the ’Dawgs outshot the Rebels 54.8 percent (17-of-31) to 21.7 percent (five-of-23) and out-rebounded them 29-8.

Georgia shot 52.6 percent for the night, its highest shooting percentage of the season; the 35-point margin of victory was also Georgia's best of the year.

Meredith Mitchell led the way for Georgia with 20 points and six boards, Jasmine Hassell added 15 and Anne Marie Armstrong and Khaalidah Miller chipped in 14 apiece. Miller also pulled down a team-high eight rebounds.

Armstrong, who was a perfect six-of-six from the floor, notched 12 of her 14 points in the second half. Hassell was a near-perfect six-of-seven from the field.

"The second half was as good as the first half was disappointing," said Georgia coach Andy Landers. "Perhaps it was the zone and I'm sure it had something to do with Ole Miss' preparation for tonight's game, but we weren't very effective defensively in the first half. We didn't rebound the ball well and we turned the ball over in the first half. In the second half, we dominated the boards, took care of the ball and really did a nice job defensively."

"I have to give our kids credit for turning something that didn't look very good into something that was impressive," said Landers of his team's bounce-back from a.disappointing 57-61 loss to Florida last weekend. "I give them a lot of credit for mentally being able to flip that switch in the second half. Without question, the defense and our ability to rebound the basketball in the second half got it all going for us."

Valencia McFarland had a game-high 22 points and six assists to lead Mississippi, which suffered its 10^th-straight defeat.

Georgia gets a very hot LSU team for its Senior Day on Sunday. The goal is to hold on to third in the conference, because that buys a bye in next week’s league tournament.

Landers needs just six wins to get to 600. Only an NCAA championship run is likely to afford that.

Mississippi State 45 @ FLORIDA 79: The Gators, who currently lead the second tier of league teams, closed out the home season with a sixth consecutive home win, this one with a season-high 34-point margin of victory.  At 8-7 in league play, even if they lose at Tennessee this coming weekend, the Gators will finish no worse than even in conference, which hasn’t happened since 2008-09.

“It was a really big win for us. It was really important for a lot of reasons,” Gator coach Amanda Butler said of the victory in which all 10 Florida players who dressed for the night's game scored. “Most importantly for our team tonight was to finish in great fashion on our home court for our group of seniors. With our win over Georgia on Sunday, we needed to come in, show a lot of maturity and poise going forward with this game, the next and the SEC Tournament ahead.”

Jordan Jones led the Gators in scoring with 18 points. She matched her personal best with six three-pointers (on 12 tries). Classmate Azania Stewart scored 13, and in her league-best 20th double-figure scoring game of the season, junior Jennifer George notched 12. Florida won the backboard battle, 51-29.

Porsha Porter put up 17 points for State, but received very little help from her teammates, as no other Bulldog broke the double-digit scoring mark. State took the first five minutes of the game to find the bottom of the basket and shot just 30.9 percent from the floor for the game.

Vanderbilt 45 @ LSU 79: It was a feel-good night in Baton Rouge. Senior night was a success, as LSU won its sixth straight to take its 20^th win of the season. The home finale drew the second-best crowd of the season, 5,745.

The Tigers are playing for an NCAA berth; if they get a bid, and at this point it looks like they will, home-court advantage in the first two rounds will come along with it, as the Tigers will be hosting.

Statistical trend alert: For the fifth straight game, LaSondra Barrett led the Tigers, this time with 20 points Iincluding 12-of-15 from the free-throw line which moved her into third place in the school's record books for career free throws made and attempted) and 12 rebounds.

Feel-good moment of the night: LSU senior Destini Hughes took a final bow.

Hughes, a senior, had to retire earlier this season when her blown-out knees said enough. The team leader and point guard was in uniform and on the court for the tip with her four classmates. Of course, Florida controlled the tip. Of course, it went right to Hughes.

She intentionally threw it out of bounds and received a standing ovation for the "turnover" as she hobbled off the court. It was all the idea of rookie coach Nikki Caldwell and, according to Caldwell, Vanderbilt played along to allow Hughes to celebrate her Senior Night and be recognized by the fans.

"That type of giving that [Vanderbilt Coach] Melanie [Balcomb] did for Destini and for our program is just a testimony to her being a great person," said Caldwell. "She was looking at the overall situation, and we definitely appreciate her giving Destini the chance to stand out there. That's something that Destini will take with her the rest of her life."

Caldwell also reflected on her pride in the graduating class and their contributions to the program.

"I can't say how proud I am to be a part of this," said Caldwell. "We have five great seniors and they have meant a lot to this program. I told them we still have some unfinished business.”

The Commodores, on the other hand, stayed with a trend as well, which is sneak into the bottom of the Top 25 nationally and then bomb.

In fairness, however, Vandy put up a good fight and led by five (47-42) with a little more than 12 minutes remaining. But LSU took off on a 13-2 run to grab a 55-49 edge by the 6:30 mark and hung on for the victory.

And though they couldn't pull off the win, the 'Dores did push the Tigers to the limit, as Christina Foggie led three Vandy players in double-figures, scoring 17 points, while Jasmine Lister registered 14, plus four assists, and Elan Brown came off the bench for 12 before fouling out of the game.

Alabama 40 @ AUBURN 81: This one was for state pride and little else. Each side has only a dozen overall wins, and not a prayer for an NCAA bid between them.

In the end, the Tigers not only took the win, but took it in style with an 81-40 blowout of visiting Alabama.

For Auburn, the victory ended a five-game slide, setting a positive note on which the Tigers could >begin their farewell celebrations for head coach Nell Fortner, who announced earlier this week that she would step down at the end of the season, as well as the three Tiger seniors.

In the statement announcing her resignation, Fortner noted her desire to “do something else” after multiple decades in coaching and having led the Olympic team to the 2000 Gold. Together with Otis-Fanning's retirement, the other coaching departure announced this week, Fortner's resignation brings the expected new coaching positions in the league for next season to four.

"It's a nice way to end my coaching at Auburn, playing Alabama and going out with that one," Fortner said. "You know, when you're an Auburn coach, playing Alabama is a big game.

"That one felt good. I thought we just played for 40 minutes, and it was good to do that. If this team starts kind of riding that wave a little bit, and let's see what we can do. It was a good night."

The 41-point win tied Auburn's largest margin of victory in conference this season and the Tigers' 47 first-half points were the most points they had scored in a half this year. The 81 points they put on the scoreboard Thursday were also a season-high.

Auburn’s top scorer was sophomore Tyreese Tanner, who posted a career-high 23 points. Blance Alverson, who finished with 15 points, also tied her personal best with five three-pointers on eight attempts, while Camille Glymph, who came off the bench for 15 more, knocked down three treys on eight tries, to give each 53 made threes on the season. That moved the pair into a tie with Tamela McCorvey (2006-07) for seventh place in the Auburn record books for three-pointers in a single season.

Najat Ouardad rounded out the list of Auburn's double-digit scorers with 10 points, plus five assists.

Alabama was led by Jessica Merritt, who posted 15 points and grabbed six rebounds and four steals, but turned the ball over six times.

Auburn hosts Ole Miss on Sunday in the regular-season finale for both teams, while Alabama finishes things out at Vanderbilt.

Current SEC Standings

SEC Women's Basketball Standings
(As of Feb. 24, 2012)
Rank	School	Conf.	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
1	Kentucky	12-3	.800	23-5	.821
2	Tennessee	11-4	.733	20-8	.714
3 (tie)	Arkansas	10-5	.667	21-6	.778
3 (tie)	Georgia	10-5	.667	21-7	.750
3 (tie)	LSU	10-5	.667	20-8	.714
6	South Carolina	9-6	.600	20-8	.714
7 (tie)	Vanderbilt	8-7	.533	20-8	.714
7 (tie)	Florida	8-7	.533	18-10	.643
9 (tie)	Mississippi State	4-11	.267	14-14	.500
9 (tie)	Auburn	4-11	.267	12-16	.429
11 (tie)	Alabama	2-13	.133	12-17	.414
11 (tie)	Ole Miss	2-13	.133	12-16	.414
Source: secdigitalnetwork.com