teacherdean
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There have been many games that should have been over by the first half in which Tennessee let the other team hang around way longer than they should have. That forced Holly to keep the starters in and play 30+ minutes.
The difference with UConn is that they go straight for the jugular so that the majority of games are over by the beginning of the second half, and the starters can rest while the reserves get valuable game time.
There are plenty of SEC teams (Auburn, Alabama, Missouri, Florida, Vandy off the top of my head) that Tennessee should be able to plow through, but they keep playing down to their level. Once the team starts playing to kill, the reserves will play more.
As far as next year's rotation, Cooper and Deshields will essentially take over for Ariel and Burdick. Nared will get her 12 minutes at the SF and probably another 8 minutes at PF. Middleton will probably continue to get 10-12 minutes at SG. I will guess that Tucker, Dunbar and Jackson will probably not see much court time, unless Tucker becomes a regular part of the rotation from now until the end of the season.
This may be a wild statement, however, the lower teams in the SEC would be near the top of the AAC. Now I do agree that we have a tendency to lack the killer instinct of a UCONN. That has a lot to do with coaching style. Genno gets on his players butt if they screw up. He pushes his players if they are up by 1 or 100, Holly, on the other hand, appears to push very little, even if a player makes a major screw up. I can't project what she does in practice, but on the sideline she is not as fired up as a Genno, Mulkey, Staley, and even McGraw of ND who is very stern with her players. I know that a few on this site will get on my case, however, I wonder if Holly is getting everything out of her players that they are capable of giving.
It is hard to believe that two 5 stars (Nared/Middleton) would come to the next level and look like 1 stars. A lot of us are starting to blame players and throwing them under the bus for their lack of production. Not every 5 star fits into a particular system but may be great in another system. I hate to mention this, they might just be freshmen making freshmen mistakes. Before we all get excited and pencil the Lady Vols into the 2016 final 4, we may be facing the same issues next year.
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