Rocky Top is back on top.
Tennessee won its 17th SEC tournament championship with a 71-70 victory over Kentucky on Sunday at Gwinnett Arena.
After falling in last year’s semifinals to eventual champ Texas A&M, the Lady Vols (27-5) resumed their dominance of the conference. They have won four of the past five and seven of the past 10 SEC tournaments.
“It’s special to me because it’s my first one (as head coach),” Tennessee’s Holly Warlick said. “I’ve been a part of so many (as a player and assistant)… I just love that these guys get to experience it. They are part of our history now. We talk a lot about history and tradition. They’ve put themselves a part of our history and our tradition.”
Kentucky (24-8) was in its fourth tournament championship game in the past five years. The Wildcats lost to Tennessee in the 2010 and 2011 finals and to the Aggies last year.
It was a back-and-forth game on Sunday in which the Lady Vols didn’t take control until the final minute when Meighan Simmons twice gave Tennessee four-point leads. She led the Vols with 17 points on six-of-18 shooting, but Isabelle Harrison was named the tournament’s MVP after scoring 16 points and grabbing five rebounds. DeNesha Stallworth led Kentucky with a game-high 21 points.
The game seemed to begin to turn Tennessee’s way on two decisions. The first involved Warlick’s decision to switch from a zone defense, used in the first half in which Kentucky shot 53.1 percent , to a man-to-man that limited the Wildcats to 31.8-percent shooting in the second half.
The second involved sets of technical fouls called on Tennessee’s Cierra Burdick and Jasmine Jones and Kentucky’s Samarie Walker and Stallworth with 8:35 left. Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell said he could feel tensions rising and asked the officials to watch things closely, particularly the actions of Burdick. Warlick said she didn’t sense anything coming.
“It’s a physical game,” Burdick said. “It’s basketball, it’s SEC basketball at that. It’s one of the most physical leagues in the country. We are going to compete. If chippiness happens, it happens.”
Fired up, Tennessee’s defense responded by limiting the Wildcats to four field goals in the remainder of the game.
“They got real physical and started riding us out of the lane and we didn’t respond well,” Mitchell said. “That’s 100-percent on me.”
Trailing by five with 5:27 remaining, Tennessee’s Jordan Reynolds hit two free throws and followed that by grabbing a defensive rebound and going coast to coast, where she was fouled while shooting a layup by Bria Goss. Reynolds completed the three-point play to tie the game at 59 with 4:07 left.
After the teams traded baskets several times to keep the game tied, Tennessee took a 65-63 lead on free throws by Simmons with 1:45 left. She was fouled by Jennifer O’Neill, who came flying in trying to steal a long pass.
Kentucky turned over the ball on its ensuing possession, and Reynolds capitalized with a jumper to push the Vols’ lead to 67-63 with 51 seconds left.
O’Neill hit two free throws for Kentucky to make it a two-point game.
Simmons flew in for a layup to give Tennessee a 69-65 lead with 22 seconds left.
Stallworth answered with a short jumper in the post to cut Kentucky’s gap to 69-67 with 15 seconds left.
The inbounds pass went to Simmons and she was quickly fouled with 10.7 seconds left. An 80.2-percent free-throw shooter this season, she hit both to give Tennessee a 71-67 lead.
The Vols forced a turnover on Kentucky’s next possession and then survived three free throws by O’Neill with less than a second remaining to seal the victory. O’Neill tried to miss the last one, but it still went in.
“We don’t practice missing enough,” Mitchell said.
All-tournament team: The all-tournament team was composed of Texas A&M's Courtney Walker, Kentucky's Stallworth and Linnae Harper, and Tennessee's Burdick and Harrison.
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