Hard to keep making excuses about when any kind of coherent play will develop for UTenn. Pretty pathetic to say that just because a longtime Vol player did not play much last year that she should be treated as some kind of newbie who needs to make baby steps getting back into the system. The Vols starters had 288 combined games as UTenn players entering the season, and the fifth starter had 36 games with UNC plus a full season last year to practice the Vol system even if she was not playing in games. Just like UConn fans do not expect Butler to finally step on the court as someone clueless to the the Husky system, DeShields should be pretty well set at this point as to how the team is expected to play. Any kind of whines about how the starters haven't had enough time together to contend with a VTech are in the just-wow category.
And as ES noted, the four currently injured players haven't exactly been shining lights for the Vols, so how much better would the team be with them except for some breather minutes? Three of them -- Jones, Middleton, Nared -- have a combined shooting percentage of around 38%, so that's not going to help the current 41.4% much if any. I know Jones and Dunbar are forwards, but their combined A\TO ratio of 0.49 is also an issue. Dunbar shoots a little better at about 46%, but if you average less than 1 assist every 8 games and opponents know that your job is to hang outside the arc and pop a 3 attempt every time DD finally decides she's too tired to shoot, that puts your offense at a disadvantage as defenses know where to concentrate.
One of the most stunning stats for UTenn even with Russell and Graves in the lineup along with a DD who can get some rebounds is that the team is in a 4-way tie for 84th in the rebound margin stat. That used to be one stat that you could always count on the Vols to be pretty good in when all other stats failed. Not so much now. And though UTenn may have been in the AP poll since 1984 because that poll ends with the regular season\ conference tourneys, the Vols did slip out of the Coaches poll after the Ball State game in 2009. There's a healthy (unhealthy) chance it could happen again.
In fairness, WSU is down to 6 players in uniform and 4 of them are averaging more than 30 minutes a game. Tennessee would have to have half the team get the flu and the other half miss the bus to lose this game.
