NEW ORLEANS – The location was different, the final score was much closer, but the end result was the same – a Tennessee victory.
Just more than a month after beating LSU 85-62 at Thompson Boling Arena, Tennessee outlasted the Lady Tigers, 52-50, in their third consecutive two-point win of the NCAA tournament.
Saved by the heroics of senior guard Tasha Butts in the games against Baylor and Stanford, Tennessee relied on the last-second efforts of two other seniors to defeat conference rival LSU.
Shyra Ely picked LSU guard Temeka Johnson’s pocket, passing ahead to forward LaToya Davis, who scored a layup under the basket with .1 second remaining to give the Lady Vols the victory.
“I was just thinking just try to contain her (Johnson), not foul her,” Davis said. “Once she got the ball in, we double-teamed her and just tried to go for the steal and I think we did a very good job of doing that.”
With the win, the Lady Vols advance to the championship game and will meet the winner of the Connecticut-Minnesota game at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Tennessee opened up the first half out of sync offensively, shooting only 28.6 percent from the field in the opening half. LSU, meanwhile, racked up a 25-19 lead, banking on the efforts of sophomore All-American Seimone Augustus.
In the end, a seesaw battle between Tennessee and LSU came down to the closing minutes. That was not unexpected to Lady Vol coach Pat Summitt.
“Here we are at the Final Four and you see a game like this, an opponent that we won against by 23 points, but I knew that anyone who believed it was going to be that type of game would be wrong,” Summitt said. “I thought this game would go to the last couple of minutes.”
The Lady Vols began a comeback with just more than 10 minutes remaining in the action. Sophomore guard Shanna Zolman knocked in a 3-pointer with 10:33 remaining to knot the game up for the first time at 34.
A three-point play by Butts at the 4:58 mark gave the Lady Vols their second lead of the game, after holding a 6-5 lead just under four minutes into the game.
With two seconds remaining on the shot clock and 1:39 remaining, Zolman picked up an inbounds pass and knocked down a 3-pointer to give UT a 50-46 edge.
LSU battled back to the tie the game at 50 with under a minute to play, setting up the last-second scramble.
Ely turned the ball over under the basket with six seconds remaining. A Tennessee timeout planned the key defensive play that set up the Lady Vol victory.
The stretch of three Lady Vol wins has been the toughest of Summitt’s career, yet her team remains unrattled.
“I would say that out of 101 NCAA postseason games, the last three have been the toughest,” Summitt said. “This team has low blood pressure and my blood pressure right now, you would not even want to check it. Even in the last timeout, this team was really calm. We came up big and made good decisions on the defensive end.”
Ely, named as a member of the 10-player Kodak All-America team, believes that the team’s streak of good fortune might be indicative of something even bigger – a destiny.
“We’re supposed to be here,” Ely said. “We just keep finding ways to win. I think we’re just going to go off the momentum that we have now and just execute this next game.”
