KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Tennessee is ready to put its perfect NCAA Tournament home record on the line.
The Lady Vols have won all 52 NCAA Tournament games they’ve played on their home floor, a streak top-seeded Tennessee (27-5) will try to extend today when it hosts No. 16 seed Northwestern State (21-12). No. 8 seed St. John’s (22-10) meets No. 9 seed Southern California (22-12) in the other first-round game at Knoxville.
“I don’t think we are paying it much mind,” Tennessee forward Cierra Burdick said. “I guess it’s a great statistic for you all, but we’re just focused on coming out and playing our game. We leave the statistics and the records for you all.”
Tennessee Coach Holly Warlick said she is “probably 99.9 percent sure” guard Ariel Massengale won’t play this weekend.
Massengale hasn’t played since getting hit in the face Jan. 23 in a victory over Florida and doesn’t know whether she’ll play the rest of the season. Massengale, who said she has a history of concussions dating to high school, said she’s still dealing with headaches.
“I’m still staying hopeful and prayerful that things may turn around,” Massengale said. “You never know. If it happens, great. If not, I’m going to be the biggest cheerleader for this team.”
At least one person from Northwestern State knows what it’s like to beat the Lady Vols in Knoxville.
Northwestern State co-Coach Brooke Stoehr played for a Louisiana Tech team that beat Tennessee 69-64 on Nov. 14, 1999, to snap the Lady Vols’ 41-game home winning streak. Stoehr, who is from Hamburg and was known as Brooke Lassiter at the time, said she’s told her team about that game.
“What I didn’t tell them was that there were about five WNBA players on that [Louisiana Tech] team,” said Stoehr, who also spent two seasons as an assistant at UALR. “They didn’t need to hear that.”
Brooke and Scott Stoehr are the first co-head coaches to reach the NCAA Tournament since Louisville’s Martin Clapp and Sara White in 1999. Scott Stoehr, who also is a former UALR assistant, coached against Brooke when Scott was an assistant at North Texas and Brooke played at Louisiana Tech.
“She drove me crazy because she was kind of their glue player,” said Scott Stoehr, who didn’t get to know Brooke until Scott was an assistant and Brooke was a graduate assistant at Florida State in 2002-2003.
Sports, Pages 23 on 03/22/2014