By Rebekah Romney
The Tennessee Volunteers snapped the Cougars? eight-game winning streak as well as their dreams of dancing to the Elite Eight after beating BYU 68-57 in the Sweet Sixteen Saturday night, March 23.
BYU went into the game as the underdog and knew it would have to play its best basketball to beat Tennessee.
?You just can?t have a bad game and expect to win,? coach Jeff Judkins said before the game.
While neither team played its best game, the Volunteers came out on top after a close first half and an ugly second half.
The Cougars controlled the Vols for the first 15 minutes of the game, leading by as many as nine points before Tennessee got its confidence and started making its run.
The confidence builder came from freshman guard Courtney McDaniel chasing the ball through senior guard Stacy Jensen?s grasp. The two scrambled on the floor fighting each other for control when the Vols realized that McDaniel was playing harder than the rest of the team.
?I fed off her,? freshman guard Michelle Munoz said. ?We needed that. She definitely lit a spark.?
The spark started a 15-0 run by the Vols to capture the lead before halftime and head into the locker room up by five points.
Both teams were shooting 35 percent from the field in the first half, but the difference to the Cougars was junior guard Erin Thorn.
Thorn came into the game making 17.6 points per game, mostly from the arc. She made only 2 of 18 three?s and 3 of 22 field goals by the end of the game.
?For the most part I had open looks and they just weren?t falling for me,? Thorn said. ?Sometimes I get in my own head and I think that had a lot to do with it.?
Senior forward Melanie Pearson tried to pick up where Thorn left off, scoring 23 points to lead the team, but in the end came up short.
?When somebody?s not on, like Erin, she steps up,? Judkins said about Pearson. ?I guarantee next year when she (Thorn) gets those shots, she?ll hit them.?
Both Tennessee and BYU played worse in the second half, dropping into the 20?s for shooting percentages. Where BYU couldn?t make up the difference, Tennessee cashed in – the free-throw line.
Tennessee scored 24 points off free throws, shooting 80 percent. The Cougars only got 10 points. A key to this element of the game was freshman guard Shyra Ely.
She came off the bench to score 21 points, nine of which came from the charity stripe.
?How did we win this game?? Vols coach Pat Summitt said. ?I have to look at Shyra Ely. One thing she brings to the court every game is great intensity.?
Tennessee knew it owed the win to its freshman and that the outcome may have been very different without her.
?Basketball is a team sport,? senior guard Kara Lawson said. ?I was just glad I was on the same team as Shyra.?
Even though the Vols? starters did not perform to the level they were expected to perform, Summitt was able to dig into her bench and find the depth needed to win the game. The bench outscored the starters 43-25.
?They have a lot of depth and a lot of people who can score,? Pearson said. ?They just kept coming at us.?
BYU?s season is over, but it accomplished more this season than anyone thought.
?This is a stepping stone for our program,? Judkins said. ?For our program now, we feel that we?re running in the right direction.?
