Tennessee forward Zee Spearman found herself in familiar territory Thursday night as the Lady Vols battled Georgia.
Spearman, a senior in her second season under coach Kim Caldwell, played her homecoming game about 40 minutes from her high school in Dacula, Georgia. The Lady Vols utilized Spearman’s big night as the team defeated Georgia in overtime, 82-77, in a gritty back-and-forth matchup.
“Didn’t love the end of the game,” Caldwell said. “Happy to get out of here with a win. You just have to stack them in this league and on the road.”
The win brought an end to Tennessee’s (15-5, 7-1 SEC) two-game losing streak, a slide which began in a loss against Mississippi State before a blowout defeat to UConn just a few days later.
Georgia (18-5, 4-5 SEC) kept things close with the Lady Vols all night long, leading by as much as eight points in the second quarter. The game began to feel familiar to the last two contests for Tennessee, and the shots simply didn’t fall early. During the second quarter, only three Lady Vols scored, Mia Pauldo and Talaysia Cooper doing a majority of the damage.
It wasn’t until the second half that Spearman made waves. Despite the slow start, she finished the game with a team-high 23 points on a 7-for-15 shooting night, draining two threes.
“That’s just Z,” forward Janiah Barker said. “She wanted it. As I said, she lost last year. She’s home right now. Dacula is about 30 minutes away, so she had a lot of family there. I think she just wanted to put on a show. It was fun.”
Barker and Spearman aren’t always sharing the court, but when they do, the Lady Vols seem to be at their best. The big game from Spearman allowed for Barker to take a backseat offensively, while still making her presence felt with a season-high 13 rebounds.
Spearman battled with the mental side of the game early on in the, especially at the free-throw line. She began her day with four trips to the stripe in the first quarter, but converted just a single make.
Her second quarter went quiet, not attempting a shot while hauling in one rebound over nine minutes. She also picked up a pair of fouls.
“I think she’s always been one of our better foul shooters,” Caldwell said. “So I don’t necessarily know that she was lacking in confidence in that area. She was somebody that I would trust to put at the line, and I’m pretty confident when she’s there.”
Despite the numbers going against her early, Spearman persisted. She posted 19 points in the game’s final two quarters, including overtime.
Overtime proved to be Spearman’s most productive stretch, most of her work coming from the charity stripe. She hit four big free throws, helping her boost her group to victory.
While it wasn’t the main focus, the loss from last season to the Bulldogs left a sour taste in the mouths of the returning players.
“We just need to continue to stay together,” Spearman said. “We can make it through anything, honestly. This game was personal for everybody, so we just went out there and played together no matter what.”
