Lady Vols drop senior-day decision

Parker scores career-high as UT falls to Florida in OT

The Lady Vols closed out the 2005-06 regular season with a 95-91 thrilling overtime loss to Florida on Senior Day in Thompson-Boling Arena on Sunday afternoon
Candace Parker scored a career-high the Lady Vols netting 25 of her 34 points in the second half. Parker registered her 8th double-double as the redshirt-freshman had a career-high set in rebounds (15) as well.
Trailing by three with :07 on the clock senior Shanna Zolman nailed a three-pointer to tie the game at 82 and send the game into overtime.
Tennessee drops to 25-4 on the season and while dropping just their 3rd SEC game in 14 tries. Florida improves to 20-7 including 8-6 in conference. It was Florida’s second win ever against Tennessee. Their only other win was in 1997.
Parker’s previous high score was 26 in a come-from-behind victory over Georgia on February 16th.
Before the game the Lady Vols celebrabrated the success of their two seniors, Zolman and Tye’esha Fluker. For the game the duo combined for 44 points, 22 rebounds and 10 assists. Fluker had her first double-double with 22 points and a career-high 16 rebounds. Zolman netted 22 and dished out a career-high 10 assists for a double-double of her own.
Over their careers, Fluker and Zolman two helped the Lady Vols compile an overall record of 120 wins against just 17 losses. Zolman is the school’s all-time best free throw shooter and recorded a NCAA division I single-season free throw percentage record mark of 95.7% during her sophomore year. Zolman needs just NINE treys to become the UT single-season record holder.
Tennessee turned the ball over 16 times in the first half, twelve of which were caused by Florida steals. Tennessee still took a 34-30 lead into the half as Florida shot just 29% from the floor compared to UT’s 52%. For the game Florida registered 20 steals, it was the most steals UT has allowed in a game this season. The old mark was against Duke (15).
Florida took their first lead of the game at 51-50 in the middle of a 13-0 run that would put the Gators up 61-50. Tennessee went on a run of their own, of the 14-4 variety, to bring UT within one at 65-64. Tennessee was unable to get the lead back until Zolman’s last second’s heroics.
Tennessee had a shot to tie the game before the buzzer sounded but Zolman’s shot with 6 seconds to play tie the game.
The Lady Vols will begin the SEC Tournament Friday night as the #2 seed playing the winner of the #7/#10 game which plays Wednesday.