Athens — Emotion rarely matters when there is talent to override it.

The Tennessee women's basketball team proved yet again it has plenty of the latter on a night when Georgia was riding the emotion of Tasha Humphrey's last home game. The No. 3 Lady Vols, led by a player who was also in her Stegeman swan song, Candace Parker, were poised and talented enough to overcome 30 minutes of Georgia's best. In the end, Tennessee bested the No. 22 Lady Bulldogs 72-63 in front of 10,523 fans at Stegeman Coliseum.

AP (ENLARGE)

Tennessee's Nicky Anosike and Georgia's Rebecca Rowsey dive for a loose ball. The loss to Tennessee, means the Lady Bulldogs will be the No. 5 seed in this week's SEC Tournament.

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The loss, Georgia's seventh in a row to Tennessee, means the Lady Bulldogs (21-8, 8-6) will be the No. 5 seed in this week's Southeastern Conference Tournament. The Lady Bulldogs lost a tiebreaker to Kentucky for the fourth seed because of an earlier loss to the Wildcats. The fourth seed receives a first-round bye.

Georgia will play Alabama, the 12th seed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Nashville, Tenn.

That provides Georgia just a few days to figure out what went so wrong so quickly against the Lady Vols (27-2, 13-1).

One clue, Parker.

"She is the best player in the nation for a reason," Humphrey said.

The All-American and leading scorer in the conference finished with 30 points. But it was a four-minutes stretch in the second half where she had 13 straight points that pushed Tennessee into a slim lead, 41-39.

"Mentally I got out of the game," Georgia's Angel Robinson said. "It's a 40-minute game and I have to stay into it. You just let her get one second and she starts to hit."

That Parker started to score wasn't too much of a bother for Georgia. The Lady Bulldogs knew coming in that Parker was going to score. The problem was Parker started to get some help from teammate Shannon Bobbitt. Bobbitt scored nine quick points and the lead rapidly moved to double digits.

"She was the deal breaker," Georgia coach Andy Landers said. "She broke [Ashley] Houts down and went to the hole. We left her open and she hit the threes. And up to that point we were in reasonably good shape. It was just poor defense."

It wasn't the only thing that was poor for Georgia in the last 10 minutes of the game. The Lady Bulldogs allowed Tennessee to continually get to the offensive glass. The Lady Vols had 14 offensive rebounds to Georgia's six.

"Our post players got kicked on the board," Landers said.

But for a time, at least, Georgia was able to withstand those second chances. Then the Lady Vols did what they always seem to do.

"They always go on that run and we are never able to bounce back," Humphrey said.

Humphrey had seen plenty of those runs. She has never beaten Tennessee.

"Being at Georgia that is something you pride yourself on and I haven't done it," Humphrey said.

Pride and No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament mattered to Tennessee.

"We came in here with the understanding this was going to be a real tough game and talked to our team to talk about closing out this game to keep the No. 1 seed," Tennessee coach Pat Summitt said. "We struggled a little bit in the first half. Second half they came out of the locker room and played our kind of defense."

Bobbitt played the kind of offense Summitt wanted to see as well.

"I told her, 'You have got to hunt your three and hunt your shots period,' " Summitt said.

She did and Georgia never returned fire.