Friday, March 04, 2011

No. 4 Tennessee beats Florida 92-75 in SEC tourney

Glory Johnson shied away from the TV cameras, hiding behind teammate Kelley Cain, even though she’d just had one of the best games of her career.

She didn’t want to take any credit away from her fellow Lady Vols.

Johnson scored a career-high 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds as No. 4 Tennessee beat eighth-seeded Florida 92-75 Friday in the Southeastern Conference tournament quarterfinals. .

“Being a post player, you have to get your touches from the guards,” Johnson said. “I’m not trying to take all the credit. I have off games. There’s times where I’m not hitting shots and pulling rebounds. That’s why I rely on my teammates.”

Shekinna Stricklen added 20 points for the Lady Volunteers (29-2), who are now 8-0 against Florida in the SEC tournament. They’ll meet fourth-seeded Georgia in Saturday’s semifinals.

Tennessee won the regular-season meeting with the Lady Bulldogs 77-44 on Feb. 21.

The Lady Vols had a 38-36 halftime edge, but Johnson hit a long-range jumper, a shot in the paint and a fast-break layup in the first 1:25 of the second half to give them a 44-36 lead. She finished the game 11 of 16 from the free-throw line.

“We knew they were going to come out at halftime and come out on a run,” Florida guard Deana Allen said. “When Glory was scoring back to back to back, it deflated us in a way. We knew we had to answer.”

Jordan Jones hit a 3-pointer from the corner to cut the margin to five, but it was as close as the Gators (18-14) would get.

The Lady Vols shot 69.2 percent in the second half and hit 17 of 25 from the free-throw line after halftime. The Lady Vols scored 50 points in the paint, got 28 points off 18 Florida turnovers and turned a 40-32 rebounding advantage into 18 second-chance points.

Lanita Bartley led Florida with 14 points. Ndidi Madu and Allen each scored 13, Jaterra Bonds had 12 and Jones scored 10.

“I told the team in the locker room there were a lot of things we could have done better but there’s no way we could have fought any harder than we did,” Florida coach Amanda Butler said. “However, we didn’t come here to put up a good fight.”

Tennessee won the SEC regular-season title after an undefeated run through conference play. The Lady Vols beat their SEC foes during the regular season by an average 24.1 points per game.

The Lady Vols hadn’t had too much trouble with the Gators in their two regular-season meetings. Tennessee limited Florida to 15 first-half points in its 83-40 win on Jan. 13 in Gainesville, and the Gators hit just 25 percent of their shots and scored their fewest points of the season in Tennessee’s 61-39 win on Feb. 10 in Knoxville.

But the Gators entered the game having won four straight and had warmed up for the Lady Vols with a 68-59 victory against ninth-seeded Arkansas in Thursday’s first-round game. Florida led the Lady Razorbacks by as many as 17 points and shot 60.7 percent in the first half and scored the final nine points to win.

This time against Tennessee, Florida led 16-14 when Stricklen hit a 3-pointer from the wing and Angie Bjorklund followed with another from the corner as part of a 10-2 run by Tennessee. Glory Johnson hit six free throws and a layup over a 2:56 period that helped the Lady Vols build to a 35-24 lead with 5:41 before halftime.

The Gators fought back with a 10-0 run that included four points by Bartley and a 3-pointer by Allen, getting within 35-34 with 2:38 in the first half, and the Lady Vols entered halftime with a 38-36 lead.

“You can tell they spent a lot of time on their offensive game,” Tennessee coach Pat Summitt said. “The ball didn’t get stuck in players’ hands. I thought they were really aggressive. They’re tough.”

Florida actually shot better than Tennessee in the first half—48.4 percent to 41.9 percent—but Tennessee had four more points at the free-throw line.

Johnson had 10 points at halftime and surpassed her previous career high of 22 points, set on Jan. 23 in a win against Mississippi State, when she hit a pair of free throws with 5:49 left in the game to make it 74-61.

“Florida is a physical team,” Johnson said. “I don’t know if it looked like it or not, but they were giving me an extremely hard time.”

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