Rhyne Howard had a career-high seven steals, seven rebounds and six assists. (Vicky Graff Photo)
For the second time this season Rhyne Howard had trouble making shots against Tennessee. However, Howard did what John Calipari has pleaded for his players to do — find a way to help a team win when the shots are not falling.
The junior All-American did that by getting seven rebounds, seven steals, and six assists in the win over the Vols Thursday night. She tied her career-high for steals and helped contribute despite not scoring in double figures for just the ninth time in her career or making a 3-pointer for only the ninth time.
Kentucky still won 71-56 with Howard missing nine of 13 shots from the field and not even getting to the foul line.
“I think the shots didn’t fall. I thought she had some great looks that she can normally hit,” Kentucky coach Kyra Elzy said after Thursday’s game. “Now, she did take some off-balance shots which we talked to her about at halftime.
“But the thing about basketball, some nights the shots will go, some nights they won’t. But why I was proud of her is that she continued to play hard, she continued to engage her teammates, she went and got rebounds, she made some unbelievable passes and got some key steals when we needed, so she impacted the game.
“She’s a scorer, she will find her rhythm. We’ll go back and put some extra shots up. She can do that.”
Elzy said Howard learned from her previous poor shooting game to do more to help the team in other ways.
“In Knoxville, when her shot wasn’t going in, I challenged her about continuing to step up, be a good teammate, stay engaged in the huddle, lift someone else up and go do other things when your shot’s not falling,” Elzy said. “So she learned from that and she stepped up tonight, as you can see on the stat sheet.”
Elzy also is learning in her first year as head coach. She prefers an aggressive man-to-man defense but was not afraid to go to a zone defense that stopped Tennessee’s momentum — maybe something Calipari should consider more often.
“That’s one thing that the staff and I talked about. We kind of laughed. We are all defensive coaches and we’re all accustomed to playing pressure man. So, having to change up to a zone is, sometimes, out of my comfort zone,” Elzy said.
“Knowing that we needed to do that to break momentum … but the players played aggressive out of it. Our ability to rebound tonight was huge.”
The women also did another thing Calipari’s team has not always done. They did not panic when Tennessee made its big second-half run.
“I didn’t want us to panic offensively, which we have done plenty before. We start quick shooting the ball, you want to make something happen. We just talked about in the huddle, unless you have a wide-open layup, let’s make four or five passes and we take rhythm shots,” Elzy said.
“Still make the defense work. The shots that we were taking were good shots and they would go in, we just couldn’t panic. But I thought we answered the run, remained composed, which is a step forward in our offense.”
