Still, there’s no measuring stick quite like the Tennessee Lady Vols, the defending national champs and winners of eight titles overall.
The No. 6 Longhorns measured up in every way Sunday, thumping No. 7 Tennessee 73-59 behind 21 points from Brittainey Raven and a dominant effort on defense and rebounding.
“We knew we could win,” said Kat Nash, who scored 12 points and hit a big 3-pointer in a 10-1 Texas run in the second half. “We knew if we played our hardest, we would win.”
Texas is 9-0 for the first time since the 1987-88 season.
“We are growing,” Goestenkors said. “We are going to be a national power and a team to always be reckoned with.”
Tennessee (7-2) lost five key players, including national player of the year Candace Parker, from last year’s national title team that pounded Texas 92-67 last season. The loss left Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt 10 wins shy of career No. 1,000.
“Night and day,” Summitt said in comparing this Texas team to last season.
A quick look at the stat sheet showed just how far the Longhorns have come.
Texas held Tennessee to 33 percent shooting, forced 18 turnovers and dominated the rebounding 52-41, including 19 offensive boards that led to 17 second-chance points.
“We missed so many, easy, easy shots in the paint,” Summitt said. “You’ve got to give Texas an awful lot of credit. They were tough.”
The young Lady Vols hurt themselves with fouls and 11 of 24 free throw shooting. Freshman Glory Johnson, Tennessee’s leading scorer this season, played less than three minutes of the first half because of foul trouble and was 7-of-14 from the line with several key misses in the second.
Texas started fast, hitting four of its first five shots, then went cold, going 5-of-26 for the rest of the half. The Lady Vols, even with Johnson spending most of the half on the bench and Angie Bjorkland picking up three fouls in the half, rallied from eight points down to make it 31-31 at halftime.
Johnson gave Tennessee it’s only lead the first time she touched the ball in the second and had eight of the Lady Vols’ first 10 points of the half. The game was tied 41-all when Texas cobbled together the big run that changed the game.
Raven started it with a baseline layup off a nifty no-look pass from Carla Cortijo before Raven and Nash hit consecutive 3-pointers to put Texas up 51-42.
