Candace Parker’s shoulder needed to be stabilized, and someone needed to find a sleeve to do it. Needless to say, college basketball’s winningest coach was a little bit antsy.
“I’m about to have a fit as to why we don’t have it right there,” Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt said.
Once the sleeve was located and Parker put it on, reigning national champion Tennessee was back on track for the Final Four.
Parker dislocated her left shoulder but still scored 26 points to lead the top-seeded Lady Vols out of a second-half deficit for a 53-45 win over second-seeded Texas A&M in the NCAA Tournament’s Oklahoma City Regional final Tuesday night.
She twice left the game in the first half with the injury and didn’t return until about halfway through the second half. She scored six points in an 8-0 run as the Lady Vols overcame a 42-37 deficit.
“I was just going to play as hard as I could and not to think about my shoulder and my situation,” Parker said. “I didn’t want this to be the last time that we played together.”
“Parker is Parker and we did as well as we could,” A&M coach Gary Blair said. “And I thought she showed a lot of effort playing with that shoulder of hers because I know she was in a lot of pain. But we were in a lot of pain trying to guard her, too.”
She scored only eight points in the second half, but it was enough to push the Lady Vols (34-2) ahead when combined with sturdy defense that kept second-seeded A&M (29-8) scoreless for a 5-minute stretch.
The sleeve wasn’t an immediate fix. Her first shot was an airball on a jump shot, and then she couldn’t make a layup off a lob.
She turned a second alley-oop attempt into a layup, and that got the Lady Vols’ run going. Shannon Bobbitt followed with two free throws, and Parker hit two to put Tennessee ahead 43-42 with 3:44 left. She went 1-for-2 on two successive trips to the foul line to stretch the lead to three.
After a free throw by the Aggies’ Takia Starks, Parker lost the ball in the lane but was able to recover and pass to Alexis Hornbuckle for a deep 3-pointer that gave the Lady Vols a 48-43 edge with 48.8 seconds left.
Hornbuckle and Bobbitt each hit two free throws to seal the win, and Parker added another to cap her regional MVP performance.
“People, sometimes they see Candace as more of a finesse player but I think sometimes when you see finesse players, you don’t realize just how mentally tough they are until you see them fight through the adversity that she fought through tonight,” Summitt said.
Summitt can understand what Parker went through. She dislocated her shoulder recently, although her injury occurred while she was trying to shoo a raccoon off her back porch. Not exactly the Final Four on the line.
Tennessee advanced to the Final Four for the sixth time in seven seasons and will face Southeastern Conference rival Louisiana State. The Lady Tigers beat Tennessee during the regular season but lost in the SEC Tournament title game. The Lady Vols seek their eighth national title and second straight.
A&M’s best season in program history concluded with a rugged defensive performance. The Aggies held Tennessee to its lowest point total this season. Tennessee shot 5-for-20 in the second half but scored half of its 24 points from the foul line and held the Aggies to 22 percent shooting (6-for-27).
Starks scored 12 to lead A&M, A’Quonesia Franklin had 11 and Danielle Gant 10. Gant’s layup with 6:17 left put A&M up 42-37, but the Aggies then went 0-for-4 from the field and Franklin missed the front end of a 1-and-1 at the foul line as Tennessee pulled ahead.
Parker had scored the Lady Vols’ last 16 points when she left for the first time with 3:50 left in the first half. After making a steal, she curled off to the side on the fast break and stopped with her left arm dangling. She hobbled toward the bench and was met by a trainer who helped her to the locker room.
She returned to the game less than a minute later, but re-injured the shoulder before halftime and wasn’t able to join her team at the start of the second half. She returned to the bench and checked in with the score tied at 36 and 10:39 left.
