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Tennessee Volunteers: Kellie Harper can make her mark with win over UConn

By Colton Pickard

29 Mar 1996: The University of Tennessee bench prepares to celebrate an 88-83 overtime victory over the University of Connecticut in the semifinals of the NCAA Women''s Final Four played at Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mandatory Cred
29 Mar 1996: The University of Tennessee bench prepares to celebrate an 88-83 overtime victory over the University of Connecticut in the semifinals of the NCAA Women''s Final Four played at Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mandatory Cred /
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The Tennessee Lady Volunteers will take on UConn, and this is Kellie Harper’s chance to make her mark early in her UT coaching career.

Coming into the 2019-20 season, it looked like Kellie Harper had a pretty big task at hand with getting the Tennessee Lady Volunteers basketball program back to the top.

So far, she’s done a great job handling the new program and has found some early success. The Lady Vols currently sit at 15-3 at ranked 23rd in the nation.

Haper came out swinging early in the season with a big win against third-ranked Notre Dame in South Bend.

Now Harper faces another tall task as the Lady Vols are hitting the road to Connecticut to face Geno Auriemma’s dominant UConn Huskies.

This will be the first time the two programs will take the same court since 2007 when legendary head coach Pat Summitt was still the head coach of the Lady Vols.

Harper, a player under Summitt, is now taking Summitt’s role and could make her mark as the Lady Vols’ head coach with another big top-three win.

The Huskies are 16-1, 6-1 at home, but that’s not going to deter Harper’s Vols from going to Connecticut to try to upset one of the best teams in the country.

Both teams have won four of its last five games, so momentum will be a tossup. Renie Davis can offset that if she can score early and control what happens down low on both sides of the ball.

UConn has a high powered offense once again this season, and their defense has everything necessary to be a championship team. The Huskies won its last game 92-34, so the Vols will have to come out swinging early and all game long if they don’t want to get embarrassed too.

The Lady Vols have also had some pretty impressive wins, though, so we can’t discount their abilities compared to UConn’s. A couple of weeks ago, the Lady Vols beat Ole Miss 84-28, so there’s a lot of potential with the Lady Vols too.

Tennessee Basketball: I think the Vols are getting better. dark. Next

If Harper can get her Lady Vols to victory tonight, then she could very well be on her way to a successful career at Tennessee, similar to her former college coach.

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