Adams: Duke beats Lady Vols at own game

Duke might as well have taken Pat Summitt’s coaching manual and beaten the Lady Vols over the head with it. Its method of victory couldn’t have been any more obvious Monday night.

Summitt has been preaching defense and rebounding for all of her 35 seasons as UT’s coach. Those virtues were rarely more evident at Thompson-Boling Arena.

They were evident in Duke.

The seventh-ranked Blue Devils held UT to 32.1 percent shooting and outrebounded it 49-36 in a 62-54 victory. They shut out UT for an 8:15 stretch of the second half to take a 44-28 lead with 8:51 left, but their devotion to rebounding was most glaring in the final minutes.

Three times in the last minute, Duke missed free throws, then chased down the rebounds. You can imagine how that struck Summitt.

“They just wanted it more than we wanted it,” Summitt said. “They were a lot more physical.

“They got to every loose ball. They won every hustle play.”

Duke’s superiority in that area was evident from the get-go. In taking a 12-3 lead, it strangled the life out of UT’s offense, forced a series of turnovers and set the tempo as well as the tone for the game.

“We set the tempo early in the game,” Duke center Chante Black said. “It was very up-tempo. You could see it began to wear them down.

“It’s hard to keep up 40 minutes when a team is pushing up-tempo.”

Duke pushed, and UT faltered. That was the last thing Summitt wanted to see as her team heads down the stretch of the regular season.

Just two weeks ago when Summitt was honored for her 1,000th victory, she told the crowd afterward that the Lady Vols’ goal, as always, was to make the Final Four. But Duke looked more like a Final Four team than the two-time defending national champions did.

In fact, during one of its worst stretches of the season, UT was so blatantly inept that even the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament no longer looks like a sure thing.

In that 16-0 second-half run, Duke made five layups while UT went 0-for-9 from the field and 0-for-4 at the free-throw line. The Lady Vols rarely have looked so vulnerable.

“I think our team is pretty fragile,” Summitt said. “If things don’t go well, they don’t shoot the ball well; they don’t defend. They worry.”

Contrast their record with the history of the program. No wonder, they’re worried.

They could be remembered, more for losing than for Summitt’s 1,000th victory. With an 18-7 record, they already have lost more games than any UT team since 1996-97.

The 1996-97 team rallied to win a national championship. But it had Chamique Holdsclaw. This team has one senior, and the rest of its healthy players are either sophomores or freshmen.

“This team needs to grow up,” Summitt said. “Everybody wants to beat Tennessee, and they believe that this is the year they can do it. We’ve had 25 games, and we should be able to figure it out by now.”

Good teams don’t just think they can beat Tennessee. They beat Tennessee.

The Lady Vols have lost seven of nine games against top-25 teams. The losses have been by an average of 10.2 points.

But UT didn’t just lose to Duke. It lost in the way so many of Summitt’s teams have won.

Sports editor John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knoxnews.com.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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