Lady Dawgs Lose To Tennessee

BASKETBALL

Glory Johnson's game-highs of 22 points and 13 rebounds led No. 6 Tennessee (11-3, 2-0 SEC) to an 80-51 victory over No. 16 Georgia (12-3, 1-1 SEC) Thursday night.

Freshman Ariel Massengale added 19 points, 15 in the first half, for the Lady Volunteers. Meredith Mitchell led Georgia with 14 points.

"We got some nice looks inside early and people that normally hit shots missed some easy ones," coach Andy Landers. "In the second half, we got good looks from the perimeter, but it seemed like none of our three-pointers would fall.

"But I wasn't impressed with us tonight," Landers continued. "I'm not going to sugar coat it. We got our butts kicked. We got our butts kicked on the offensive glass and then we drew a lot of fouls so they killed us at the free throw line. We didn't try very hard, and that's what I'm most disappointed about."

After the Lady Dawgs opened the scoring on a jumper by Jasmine James, Tennessee quickly rolled off eight straight points in a span of 96 seconds. The Lady Vols pushed their lead to double digits at 17-6 with 13:36 remaining in the first half, scoring 10 of those points on layups.

Georgia closed to within five at 30-25 with 2:05 remaining before Tennessee ended the period on a 6-2 surge. The Lady Dawgs pulled within 38-32 early in the second half and were within eight at the 15:56 mark. The Lady Vols then embarked on a 17-4 run over the next 5:21 to put the game out of reach.

Georgia will return to action Sunday, remaining on the road to face Auburn at 2 p.m. ET. The game will be televised regionally on CSS.