With no defenders around, Aisha Sheppard stood in the corner alone. Georgia Amoore saw it from the opposite corner and dribbled past her defender, down the baseline and handed the ball off to Sheppard. Without looking back, Amoore raised her hand with three fingers up — before Sheppard even attempted the shot.
Sheppard, of course, knocked the shot down as Amoore streamed down the baseline, oozing with confidence with a 35-31 lead over No. 11 Tennessee in her back pocket.
But falling back onto defense, Amoore and Sheppard were at a disadvantage to their defenders. The Lady Vols, known for their length that other teams don’t have, were a difficult matchup for Tech’s smaller guards.
The lack of length for Tech became its achilles heel late in the game when it squandered a seven-point lead with six minutes left. And it started with Tennessee’s 6-foot-2 guard Sara Puckett’s basket when she ran around forward Cayla King and buried a floater in the paint over three VT defenders.
Puckett’s shot was the go-ahead bucket that gave Tennessee the lead during its 16-3 run in the Hokies’ 64-58 loss to the Lady Vols.
A loss in which center Elizabeth Kitley struggled shooting (1-of-12, four points). One in which Sheppard’s 30-point effort was overshadowed. And one in which the Hokies played one of their best defensive games against one of the best teams — maybe even the best team — they’ll face all season.
“Going into the game, I thought we had a pretty good shot, it was a pretty good matchup for us,” Tech head coach Kenny Brooks said. “Throughout the game, I thought we competed to the point where I thought we gave ourselves a shot to win. I didn’t like the way we finished the game, you know, we allowed [Tennessee] to be physical with us. … We didn’t come up with the key plays we needed to — got to give them credit.
Tennessee set its offense up around guards Jordan Walker and Puckett, who combined for 32 points on 13-of-21 shooting, and when they weren’t open, it had an insurance policy down low in 6-foot-6 center Tamari Key. To Tech’s credit, though, it hung around throughout the afternoon and never trailed by more than six points.
Early on, it was Sheppard who led the way on offense, accounting for 13 of the Hokies’ first 16 points. In her previous three games — two in San Juan and one against Wisconsin — she had just 16 combined points.
On Sunday, she scored in a variety of ways with three treys, a layup and two free throws in the first quarter. Her outburst allowed Tech to take a 16-12 lead heading into the second period.
“[I stayed] confident, listening to my teammates, listening to my coaches,” Sheppard said. “And knowing that I’m a fifth-year senior and I’ve been through a lot, but continuing to stay the course. It’s not going to be a great game every game, but we just have to stay in it and stay with each other, and that’s exactly what I did.”
Tech’s offense forced Tennessee to move into a tougher full-court press, which forced VT to take unfavorable shots, but as Brooks put it, “it’s [Tennessee’s] style of basketball.” To his point, Tech didn’t shoot better than its first quarter total of 38.5%.
It wasn’t able to create the easy transition opportunities it did against much weaker non-conference opponents earlier in the season, nor could the Hokies box out and pull in rebounds. They were out-rebounded, 45-29.
“I think this loss is completely on us and less about Tennessee,” Sheppard said. “I think that we made some mistakes towards the end that cost us the game. I don’t think they did anything special. I think it was us.”
But even when VT has games where it’s struggled to rebound, its ability to create space, shoot and knock down the threes with ease usually are able to offset its size disadvantage. The team is full of shooters, but the space to generate those shots wasn’t there.
The guards would swing the ball outside, looking to create enough space for a shot while Kitley would disappear inside the defense of the Lady Vols. Key was — and will likely be — Kitley’s toughest task in her career, to which Brooks said that she needed more confidence when tasked with matching up with defenders her size.
“[Key] is a good inch taller than [Kitley], she’s very long and she’s a very aggressive shot blocker,” Brooks said. “[Kitley] has to understand that people aren’t going to give her anything and she needs to find different ways to score.”
Aside from Sheppard’s nine field goals and Amoore’s five, no other Hokie made more than two. The only other player to score more than one was Cayla King, who knocked down two threes on back-to-back possessions, which gave Virginia Tech a four-point lead with eight minutes left in the game.
Two minutes later, a layup from Key under the basket sparked Tennessee’s game-winning 15-3 run. Tech kept pace with the Vols’ offense all afternoon, holding their offense to shoot 40% or better just once in the first three quarters. In the fourth, however, the Hokies’ pace and defense fell off, allowing Tennessee to shoot 68.8%, while only shooting 36%.
“It was a lack of focus, a lack of toughness towards the end of the game,” Sheppard said. “But obviously, [Tennessee] is a top-25 team for a reason, so they weren’t going to continue to shoot that poorly. Big time players make big time shots, and they made those.”
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Thank you for the write-up. Lady Hokies are ‘for real.’.
I hope WB has a few bucks at the end of the season to retain Coach Brooks. He has been excellent!