Saturday, March 26, 2005

Texas Tech offense gets to the point

KNOXVILLE — Texas Tech point guard Erin Grant is as efficient as they come.

The Lady Vols get their chance to try to make her inefficient tomorrow at 12 p.m. at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia in the Sweet 16.

The junior has 213 assists this season to only 60 turnovers. Her assist-to-turnover ratio in the tournament has been 4-to-1.

''That is outstanding,'' UT freshman Alexis Hornbuckle said. ''It's so hard to be that efficient.

''I wish I could have that assist-to-turnover ratio. She has to work hard. She controls her team. Hopefully we can just make her a little less efficient in the game.''

By comparison, senior point guard Loree Moore has the best ratio of any Lady Vol, and she has 89 assists to 61 turnovers this year.

''(Grant) runs everything,'' Moore said. ''She gets everybody open shots, gets everybody into the game. I think if we can control her and focus on her a lot more that we can kind of disrupt them and get them out of their gameplan.''

The deep end: Since the NCAA Tournament started, Texas Tech has not had a bench player in the game for more than 13 minutes.

In the Lady Raiders' most recent win over MTSU, all five starters played for 35 minutes or more.

The Lady Vols, meanwhile, had nine players get more than 15 minutes of playing time in the first round and seven in the second.

''Hopefully that can wear any team out,'' Lady Vols junior Shanna Zolman said. ''So we're going to try to make their five guard our nine.''

Good timing: While the early tipoff on Easter is causing some problems for players' families to make the trip to Philadelphia, Lady Vols Coach Pat Summitt said she would rather have that than what her team dealt with a week ago.

Tennessee did not tip off until nearly 10 p.m. Eastern time in both the first and second rounds. Summitt said if she had her pick though, she would have preferred the 2 p.m. tipoff tomorrow.

''One thing is you don't have to sit around all day and think about it,'' she said.

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