Tennessee associate head coach Holly Warlick realizes it may be hard to recognize the 13th-ranked Lady Volunteers in their first solid win after two Southeastern Conference losses this month.
After their 91-54 victory over No. 7 Kentucky on Monday night, Warlick said they looked like the team she sees in practice and the team she expects to see on the court.
''You can look at how we played those two (losses) and see how we played against Kentucky and wonder, `What team is this?''' Warlick said. ''That's the team we're confident we need to see all the time, and that's the team that can be there. They've just got to carry over the things we do in practice to the game.''
Meighan Simmons scored a season-high 25 points, and Shekinna Stricklen added 18 points for the Lady Vols, who shot 59 percent while holding Kentucky to 33.3 percent and held a 45-27 rebounding advantage. Glory Johnson scored 10 points.
Tennessee (18-7, 9-3) never trailed. Simmons hit consecutive 3-pointers to make it 10-2 and blocked a 3-point attempt by Keyla Snowden at the other end, one of six rejections by Tennessee in the first half.
The Wildcats (21-4, 10-2) pulled within 21-16 on a steal by Azia Bishop and a transition layup by Bernisha Pinkett with 9:20 in the first half, but they wouldn't get any closer. The loss marked the first time this season Kentucky has lost consecutive games.
''It probably should count as more than one loss, but it only counts as one,'' Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell said. ''We are leaving town in first place, and we need to find some way to get it together and see if we can earn a victory. We'll have to see what we're made of and see if we can bounce back.''
Vicki Baugh scored on a putback and was fouled by Bishop. She missed the free throw but charged through the lane and converted the rebound that put Tennessee up 29-18.
Those baskets launched a 14-0 run by the Lady Vols across a 3:21 stretch. During that time, Kentucky missed two free throws and two shots from the field and turned the ball over four times.
''I think we stayed composed during the game and just continued to keep our pedal to the metal,'' Simmons said. ''We just ran on them, and I think that's one thing we need to continue doing.''
Tennessee led 46-28 at halftime after shooting 60 percent. Both teams had 10 turnovers in the first half, but the Lady Vols had scored eight more points off giveaways than the Wildcats.
The 18-point halftime deficit was Kentucky's largest of the season, but it only grew worse in the second half, with Tennessee's lead reaching 40 points with 4:37 to play.
Bria Goss led the Wildcats with 15 points, and Pinkett finished with 10. A'dia Mathies, who scored 34 points in the last meeting with Tennessee, had 12 before taking an elbow to the face and leaving the game with 9:26 to play.
''When the ball wasn't going in the basket, I feel like as a team we got discouraged,'' Goss said. ''We needed to see that as adversity, which we go through every day, and fight back stronger. We just needed to bounce back.''
Even with the loss, Kentucky, which hasn't played since a 61-51 loss at LSU on Feb. 5, remains alone in first place in the SEC and Tennessee is second with two weeks left in the season. The Lady Vols would have had a shot at pulling into a tie with the Wildcats but lost Thursday at Vanderbilt.
Kentucky snapped Tennessee's 36-game SEC winning streak with a 61-60 victory in Lexington on Jan. 12.
That game turned out to be part of an uncharacteristic 5-4 stretch for Tennessee in a season that started with coach Pat Summitt announcing she had been diagnosed with early onset dementia, Alzheimer's type.
After losing to the Wildcats, the Lady Vols dropped games at Notre Dame and Vanderbilt and lost to South Carolina at home, their first SEC home loss in nearly four years.
During that stretch, Stricklen, a preseason All-America and Tennessee's leading scorer for the season, has shot just 41.8 percent while the usually sharpshooting Simmons has shot just 37.2 percent.
This time, Simmons was 10 of 17 from the field and had three 3s, while Stricklen was 8 for 12.
''When we run the ball, it gives us energy, it gives us a lot of confidence,'' Warlick said. ''When Shekinna Stricklen's sprinting down the floor and we shoot layups, and Glory Johnson's shooting layups, we're a great team. It starts with our defense, and I thought our defense started everything for us and got us playing.''
