Battle for 9

[UcMiami]

I like Holly. She seems genuine, works hard and cares about her players. She'll win a lot more games at Tenn because she'll continue to recruit good talent and coach them well enough to compete for SEC championships and Final Fours. Still, there's a lot missing. Against better competition in the post-season, her teams have been easy to defend and easy to score on. She had no answer when asked why her gameplan against Alyssa Thomas didn't work:

“Well, when we game planned, we wanted to limit her touches. We wanted to force her right. We wanted to keep her off the boards,” said Tennessee coach Holly Warlick. “She did just about everything she wanted to do. I thought she came up with big rebounds when they needed them. We just didn’t have an answer for her tonight, and I don’t know why.

When asked why her team played nervous and scared in consecutive NCAA tournaments, she couldn't explain that either.

Holly is going to have some lineup decisions to make next year that won't be easy.

I agree that she will continue to win more games than she loses at TN as long as they keep her around and she will get some good recruits, but ... I think it doesn't take many more years of lackluster NCAA runs and less than exciting basketball to dim the luster of TN as a destination for top recruits. And while I don't think players will transfer away from the program, I wonder just how 'enthusiastically' they will come across on recruiting visits. I do think she is a good person but I am not sure how dynamic she is personally one-on-one with recruits - I certainly don't think she is very dynamic in press conferences.

 

[ctfjr]

In retrospect, rereading this thread is pretty funny