Tennessee Lady Vols will need more than one good half vs. Oregon State in NCAA tournament

If you watched the two NCAA women’s basketball tournament games at Thompson-Boling Arena on Friday, you might have concluded the selection committee got its seeds confused.

Sixth-seeded Oregon State looked much more like a No. 3 in its 82-58 rout of 11th-seeded Western Kentucky than third-seeded Tennessee did in a 100-60 victory over Liberty.

With 2:04 to play in the first half, UT led by only two points against a team it should have put away right away. The Lady Vols asserted their superiority in the second half for their 57th NCAA tournament victory on their home floor.

No. 58 will be more challenging. In fact, it would be an upset, based on how the two winners performed Friday.

Oregon State played with the urgency that an NCAA tournament game should foster. Tennessee opened with the casualness that too often has characterized its program the past few years.

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Don’t let the 40-point margin of victory fool you. Given the physical disparity between the two teams, Tennessee shouldn’t have needed a half to distance itself from 14th-seeded Liberty.

At least the 12th-ranked Beavers should get 13th-ranked Tennessee’s attention from the outset. They overwhelmed Western Kentucky from the get-go and never lost their edge.

“They were clicking on all cylinders,” Western Kentucky coach Michelle Clark-Heard said. “They just had a fantastic team.

“That might be the highest sixth seed I’ve ever seen. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Her point: The selection committee underestimated the Beavers.

That shouldn’t be a problem for the Lady Vols after noticing the precision with which the Beavers handled the Lady Toppers, who were good enough to beat Missouri during the regular season.

Oregon State, which leads the NCAA in 3-point shooting accuracy, made 10 of 23 against Western Kentucky. Marie Gulich, a 6-foot-5 center, had 29 points and 15 rebounds.

Other stats were just as significant, though. Sophomore point guard Mikayla Pivec had eight assists and no turnovers. She also scored 15 points and made three of five 3-point tries.

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The assist-turnover ratio could be crucial against Tennessee.

The Lady Vols probably won’t prevail in a half-court game against Oregon State. However, they could turn the game their way with full-court pressure, which often served them well during the regular season.

Western Kentucky applied full-court pressure in the opening minutes. But Oregon State had little trouble with it.

That wasn’t always the case for the Beavers during the regular season. In back-to-back January losses to UCLA and USC, they committed 48 turnovers.

Clark-Heard was aware Oregon State had been vulnerable in that area, but she didn’t have the depth to exploit it.

“We’re very low in numbers,” she said. “We (didn’t want) to run our players’ legs out.”

With that in mind, Western Kentucky applied its full-court pressure occasionally. Tennessee is more apt to do it relentlessly.

The Lady Vols' press proved to be too much for Liberty in the second half. And their lead mounted with Liberty’s turnovers.

“We changed up some things a little bit (on the press),” Tennessee coach Holly Warlick said. “We were swarming and we took chances. It paid off for us.”

It will need to pay off faster against Oregon State.

John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com. Follow him at: Twitter.com/johnadamskns.