The Lady Volunteers lost only one player off of last year’s Sweet 16 team, but she was the heart and soul of that Tennessee squad and replacing her will be no easy task.
Meighan Simmons led the Lady Vols with 16.5 points per game last year, but she was more than just a scorer. She was a leader for that Tennessee team, and with her departure, her former teammates will have step into that leadership role this season.
With Simmons graduating, the bulk of that leadership role now falls on the three Tennessee seniors, Ariel Massengale, Isabelle Harrison and Cierra Burdick.
“Anytime you lose a player of Meighan’s caliber, you have a huge hole to fill,” Burdick said. “But we have to focus on right now with the 14 girls we’ve got. I think we have done a great job of leading and getting prepared, and I think this year will be a great year.”
For Harrison, the new role has been a fun experience, and a chance to expand her role on the team while discovering more about herself.
“It’s been fun,” Harrison said. “You get to see the person that you are, and who you have become. You get to see your growth as well, being a player, seeing how well people listen to you and how effective your voice is.”
Harrison’s ability to lead has impressed head coach Holly Warlick, who has seen great improvement in the Nashville, Tenn. product over her four years at Tennessee.
“I think it’s confidence,” Warlick said. “I think Izzy is very confident now in her game. She understands we need her to play and to put up points and I don’t think she’s shying away from that. I think she’s really confident in helping to lead this team.”
While it is critical to replace Simmons’ leadership abilities, it is just as important for the Lady Vols to replace her scoring this season.
Simmons finished with 2,064 career points, making her just the fifth player in a much storied program to reach the 2,000-point mark in her career. Replacing that kind of scoring threat will be no easy task, and Tennessee will have to take a score by committee approach this year.
Tennessee’s three freshmen should help the situation, as Warlick was able to sign the No. 6 recruiting class in the country. The roles of players like Burdick will also increase from a scoring standpoint.
Burdick spent much of the offseason working on her shot in preparation for taking on some of the scoring load for her team this year.
“I want to extend my shot,” Burdick said. “I definitely want to be more consistent from behind the arc, so I put a lot of time into that, taking a lot of reps, and getting a lot of shots up. Then I worked on my face up game at that four position. I just want to be able to score in different ways.”
Burdick has already been showing some of that leadership so far this year, making sure everybody stays focused, and doesn’t get too far ahead of themselves. She uses her three years of experience to help guide her new teammates.
“Live in the present,” Burdick said. “You have to focus on the right now. You can’t get to forward looking at the future, and you can’t worry about the past. You have to focus on right now, live in the present moment and give the right now everything you’ve got.”
