‘Senior Day’ beckons for seven Lady Vols

While it seems like basketball season just started, “Senior Day” is about to arrive for the Lady Vols. It will be this Sunday, Feb. 19, at Thompson-Boling Arena and will take a bit – seven players will be honored with their families at center court before the game.

The standard format is for all seniors to be recognized on senior day, even those who have the option to return for another season because of the extra year granted by the NCAA due to pandemic disruptions. That way the seniors in all sports can go through the celebration and decide after the season if they want to move on to professional careers in basketball or some other field or return to college.

The game against Auburn tips at noon, so the senior ceremony should start at least 30 minutes before that in all likelihood. Fans wanting to salute the seven seniors should be in their seats early.

The two players who have exhausted their eligibility and already used the extra year are graduate transfers Jasmine Franklin and Jordan Walker, so that duo will be saying goodbye to the fans.

The trio of four-year seniors are Jordan Horston, Tamari Key and Jessie Rennie. Senior transfers Rickea Jackson and Jasmine Powell round out the seven. All five have an extra year in college and can opt to use it at Tennessee or elsewhere.

Horston and Jackson are projected to be first round WNBA draft picks in April and may be ready for basketball post-college and the additional financial opportunities that await overseas.

Coach Kellie Harper and Jordan Horston (Tennessee Athletics)

Tamari Key’s season ended in December because of blood clots, so her basketball future remains in limbo until she has a medical update in the spring following her treatment regimen. Powell already has said she intends to use her extra year. Rennie tore her ACL last summer and while she has warmed up with the team before games, she doesn’t appear to be close to returning to game action.

The overall point is to let the seniors walk with their families, enjoy the ceremony and make any decisions about the future after the season ends rather than in February. For recent examples in other sports, softball pitcher Ashley Rogers went through senior day last spring in 2022 and then returned this season. Volleyball players Morgahn Fingall and Kylie Robinson participated in the senior ceremony last fall and later announced they would return in 2023. Vol hoopster John Fulkerson did the same in the winter in 2021 and then returned for the 2021-22 season.

Before senior day arrives, the Lady Vols will travel to Arkansas for a game this Thursday, Feb. 16, against the Razorbacks that can be watched on the SEC Network at 7 p.m. Eastern.

For whatever reason, Tennessee has rarely played well in Fayetteville, even going back to the national title year of 2007 when the Lady Vols needed overtime to subdue the Razorbacks and preserve a perfect SEC record late in the season.

Tennessee is now 10-2 in the SEC behind South Carolina, 12-0, and LSU, 11-1. Arkansas is 6-6 and nearly doubled up Missouri on the scoreboard last Sunday. The Razorbacks nearly upset LSU in Baton Rouge and swamped Florida and outside of a wipeout by South Carolina – which has done that to several SEC teams this season – have three losses of just three points. It will be a homecoming of sorts for Franklin, who is from Fayetteville.

Jasmine Franklin (Tennessee Athletics)

Tennessee will close the regular season on Feb. 26 with a game at Kentucky and then get ready for the SEC tourney, which will be held in Greenville, South Carolina, on March 1-5.

The Lady Vols have four regular season games left – two on the road and two at home – and are trying to solidify third place in the conference and carry some momentum into postseason.

For fans concerned that Tennessee could lose seven players in one year – while that can’t be ruled out – a few do have the option to return.

Senior day typically is held on the final home game of the regular season – that would be Feb. 23 against South Carolina – but it was shifted to Sunday before the season even started. A Sunday game is a bit easier for families to attend, especially those who have to travel a longer distance. Tennessee’s seven seniors span from Australia to Michigan to Ohio to Arkansas to North Carolina.

Shifting from goodbye to seniors to hello to recruits, it also is the last Sunday game of the regular season, so the likelihood of high school targets in upcoming classes being in the stands would be high. Sundays are easier for recruits to attend because they play during the week – and parents or coaches who often work or teach during the week are the ones who need to drive them.

Ashley Rogers

Speaking of softball and Rogers, the fifth-year senior pitched a gem last weekend in Clearwater, Florida, at the season-opening tournament with 13 strikeouts for a 6-0 win over No. 8 Northwestern. Tennessee is now 3-0 and ranked No. 9 in the country.

Rogers went through senior day and came back. Basketball fans are hoping a few players might follow that same path.

Maria M. Cornelius, a writer/editor at Moxley Carmichael since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press.