December has turned into January. In college basketball that's a significant transition.

It's conference time. The preliminaries are finished. It's time to get down to business.

For the Lady Vols, January means something else.

The hardest part is over.

Tennessee waded into SEC play Thursday night with an 85-52 victory over Auburn at Thompson-Boling Arena.

One down, 13 to go.

I'm not necessarily predicting the Lady Vols will go 14-0 in the SEC this winter. But the odds aren't bad.

Since the SEC started women's competition in 1983, Tennessee has won 88.4 percent of its regular-season conference games. Stop and digest that - 88.4 percent.

Since 1993, it really gets good. Tennessee has logged eight perfect SEC seasons in the past 15 years. Five of those, all since 1998, were 14-0.

During those 15 years, the Lady Vols have won 13 regular-season titles.

Pat Summitt might have gone eight long years between NCAA titles but her program never relinquished its grip on the SEC.

And it's not as if this is some backwater outfit full of hyphens and directionals. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Year in, year out, it's one of the toughest leagues in the country. This week, for instance, five SEC teams are ranked in the top 25.

Of course, playing ranked teams won't be anything new to the Lady Vols. Auburn, No. 22 in this week's Associated Press poll, was the ninth ranked team UT has faced in 14 games.

Unlike your average SEC team, the Lady Vols spend November and December jetting around the continent playing a ranked team wherever they can find one.

Stanford? Book it. North Carolina, Texas? Bring it on. Notre Dame, DePaul? A week in Chicago sounds good. Oklahoma? OK.

It's no coincidence Tennessee ranks No. 1 nationally in strength of schedule.

So, even with Duke and Rutgers still lurking on the schedule, it's tempting to say the hardest part is over as the Lady Vols veer onto an SEC diet.

"I think the hard part is just beginning,'' said senior Nicky Anosike, begging to differ.

"Everybody comes to play against Tennessee. We know that.''

Sure they do. When you're the most successful program in your sport that's to be expected. You're Team Bull's-Eye.

Furthermore, this is family. Don't expect the rock-star treatment you got from the kind fans at Notre Dame.

"It's definitely not like that in SEC play,'' said senior Alexis Hornbuckle. "We don't get too many warm welcomes.''

Still, the numbers speak for themselves. This was UT's 16th consecutive win against Auburn.

It's 13 in a row over Arkansas, 15 in a row over Ole Miss, 32 in a row over Alabama, 34 in a row over South Carolina. Mississippi State has never - that's never as in never - beaten Tennessee.

Even Vanderbilt hasn't beaten the team it hates most in 13 tries since 2002.

Now, LSU, that's a tough one these days. And expect a fight from Georgia.

"They (the Lady Vols) get more fired up for some teams than they do for others,'' Summitt said.

Thirty-four years into this gig, Summitt knows this is a tricky time of year, shifting gears from a national barnstorming tour to conference play.

"It's more about us,'' she said.

"If you really want to win the SEC, if you want to go back and compete for a national championship, bad habits are just as hard to break as good ones.

"And we want good habits.''

So one down, 13 to go. Tennessee might go 14-0. If not, 13-1 is a good bet.

The Lady Vols know it. Eleven other teams know it, even if they don't like it.

Auburn coach Nell Fortner was asked what vibe she picked up from her team about coming to Knoxville to play the defending national champions.

"They were excited,'' Fortner said. "They knew they were going to eat at Calhoun's.''

And then, of course, they knew what was coming next.

Mike Strange may be reached at 865-342-6276.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.