STARKVILLE, Miss. – Freshman guard Mia Pauldo scored a career-high 26 points to lead four players in double figures, as hot-shooting No. 20/22 Tennessee prevailed over Mississippi State, 90-80, Thursday night at Humphrey Coliseum.
Pauldo finished eight of 12 from the field and eight of nine from the free-throw line to tie for the eighth-best scoring effort by a freshman in UT history. Also in double figures for the Lady Vols (11-3, 3-0) were senior forward Janiah Barker with 18 and senior forward Zee Spearman and redshirt junior Talaysia Cooper with 14 each, as UT shot 50.7 percent vs. the Bulldogs and carded its second-straight game making over 50 percent of its shots.
MSU (14-3 ,1-2 SEC) was paced by Kharyssa Richardson and Madison Francis, who each finished with 22 points, with Francis adding a game-high 13 rebounds. Destiney McPhaul also scored in double figures, tossing in 14.
Both teams shot the ball well in the early going at 56 percent, with UT erasing a two-point deficit by forging an 8-4 lead on buckets by Barker, Pauldo and Cooper and then getting a three-pointer by Pauldo to take an 11-10 edge into the 4:05 media timeout. A trey by Cooper and Spearman layup gave UT a pair of four-point leads, and then a period-ending 10-0 run punctuated by threes from Pauldo and Barker delivered UT a 26-19 cushion by the end of the first quarter.
Mississippi State reeled the deficit back to four on three occasions in the second quarter, but a Barker put-back and layups from Pauldo and Cooper forced the Bulldogs to ask for a timeout trailing 34-26 with 7:19 remaining in the frame. Back-to-back treys from Spearman and Jaida Civil propelled the Lady Vols to a quarter-best 40-26 lead with 5:31 to go, but MSU was able to work back within 10, 47-37, by halftime.
Tennessee extended its lead to 15 three times at the outset of the third stanza, going up 52-37 with 8:38 to go on a three by Barker and a jumper by Mia Pauldo, again at 58-43 on a Cooper trey and once more at 60-45 on a layup by Deniya Prawl with 5:25 remaining. Lauren Hurst provided UT its biggest lead of the night at that point with 4:50 left, draining a three in front of the Lady Vol bench to make it 63-45. State, though, would not go away, outscoring UT, 14-7, the rest of the period to trail by 11, 70-59, at the end of three.
The Bulldogs kept coming in the fourth quarter, scoring the first six points to trim the gap to five, 70-65, at the 8:21 mark. A Barker spin move and score and Pauldo steal and layup stopped the bleeding, and a Pauldo jumper and Spearman put-back pushed the difference back to 11, 78-67, heading into the 4:57 media timeout. The Big Orange extended the margin to 14, 86-72, with 2:32 to go on a Spearman trey, but Mississippi State crept back within 10 with 1:09 on the clock before a Barker block on a Bulldog scoring attempt essentially extinguished any hope of a comeback.
NEXT UP
Tennessee is back at Food City Center on Sunday for its only home game in a four-game stretch, facing Arkansas (11-7, 0-3 SEC) at 2 p.m. ET. The match-up between the Lady Vols and Razorbacks is part of the SEC’s “We Back Pat” Week. The contest will be broadcast on SECN+ and carried on Lady Vol Radio Network stations with audio streaming on UTSports.com.
