The Tribune

LASHANN Higgs and her Texas Longhorns suffered their first loss of the season and dropped six spots in the Associated Press Top 25 poll as a result.

Higgs scored 15 points and grabbed five rebounds but the Longhorns suffered a loss to the No.11 Tennessee Volunteers Sunday in Knoxville, Tennessee.

With the win, the Lady Vols moved to No.7, just ahead of the Longhorns at No.8.

“I will say that, as a team, we have a lot to work on both physically and mentally,” Higgs said.

“Tennessee was just tougher today. We just have a lot to work on. We have to get back in the gym, keep working and try to fix our mistakes.”

Texas is now 7-1 on the season, while Tennessee improved to 10-0. Tennessee now leads the all-time series between the two teams 24-15 and the win snapped a three-game winning streak by the Longhorns in the series.

Texas was out-rebounded for the first time this season (51-47).

“Anytime you get beat, you have to look in the mirror sometimes and think about what you could’ve done better. But, sometimes, you have to give credit to the other team, and I thought Tennessee looked like a hungry team, a team that wanted to win this game really bad on their home court.

“We’d won the last four games, and we ran into a team that was very anxious to get a win. Credit to them, and congratulations for their effort,” said Longhorns head coach Karen Aston. “I thought our team was a little uncharacteristic. We were not very good in some areas where we’re typically pretty good in. Quite honestly, it didn’t look like we were a very well-coached team. I will definitely go back in film, do a better job, because our team didn’t look very well-coached. That bothers me, because I like to pay a lot of attention to detail. We didn’t look very detail-oriented.”

Tennessee led 16-11 at the end of the first quarter and their lead extended to as much as 10 in the second with 2:52 left in the half and led 29-27 at the half.

In the fourth quarter, Higgs made back-to-back scores at the 6:47 mark to bring Texas within one, (52-51).

“I was looking forward to seeing how our team responded, not only just being in an environment where there was a really rowdy crowd. I thought it was a terrific crowd for women’s basketball. I’m a fan, so I appreciate the people that came out today and supported the women’s game. However, I was more interested in seeing how we responded to a team that may be a bit tired of losing. I really felt like Tennessee would play really well, Aston said. “What I’ve learned about our team, that we’re not quite ready to respond to somebody popping you in the mouth. Because, we got popped today, and we’ll get better from this. There’s no question.”

Texas returns to action tonight when they host Northwestern State.