Amongst a campus full of stars, Tennessee Lady Vols guards Jewel Spear and Talaysia Cooper are proving they belong.
You can have your Nicos and your Heupels, but Spear and Cooper have been more consistent forces than anything the Vols have had at quarterback since 2022 when former Tennessee signal-caller Hendon Hooker was directing one of the best offenses in UT football history.
Likewise, both can produce. Spear was nine-of-11 overall from the field, 5-of-7 from the three-point arc and 5-of-6 from the free throw line in just 28 minutes against Ole Miss in the Lady Vols’ 80-71 win on Sunday.
“I think the most impressive thing is how efficient she is,” Lady Vol coach Kim Caldwell said. “She doesn’t take bad shots. She can score at will when she gets it, and it’s hard to when you want to heat check, and you don’t force it. That’s what her stat line says, is, ‘I took the shots that came to me, and I passed the ball when I needed to pass the ball. I made plays for other people’ and got hers, which is what we want out of everyone.”
Now, with some success in her wake, Spear’s mindset needs to be solely focused on keeping that efficiency at the center of her game.
“I will always love and appreciate a player that can be level-headed and steady,” Caldwell said. “It helps calm everyone around them. When you’re a leader on the floor and you can just talk to people calmly no matter what, whether you’re up 10, down 10, that’s a breath of fresh air for a coach.”
Despite her capability of going off from three, Spear is second to Cooper in scoring on the team. While Spear is averaging 13.3 points per game, Cooper is putting up 17.7 per game. Cooper also leads the team with 3.2 steals per game and is second in rebounds and assists per game with 5.9 and 3.4 respectively.
Simply put, Cooper does it all. As a guard who transferred from the South Carolina Gamecocks, it was hard to see how she would fit in with Caldwell’s system, one predicated on guards shooting a lot of threes, since that’s not her forte.
Well, Cooper’s defensive prowess has created a lot of transition buckets from her, and she’s actually getting better from outside, shooting 26.9 percent from three right now and hitting one a game. Only a sophomore, if she gets that up to 30 percent, she can be deadly.
Right now, Spear is the clear-cut three-point specialist, shooting 40.8 percent from outside and hitting a team-leading 157 on the year. Her level-headedness, as Caldwell mentioned, can make her an assassin. That doesn’t mean that Caldwell wants her star leader to be too laid back.
“I do think that Jewel recognizes the sense of urgency that we have coming down the stretch, and she’s been more vocal in practice,” Caldwell said with the NCAA Tournament just around the corner. “She’s made sure that people are approaching every drill with a sense of urgency. Hey, let’s get in on our drills quicker. And that’s kind of how my brain works anyway. So, to have her echo that down the stretch, I think is going to help our team.”
Spear and Cooper aren’t just stars in the making. They’re already shining bright.
One Response
Cooper has become a turnover machine. She should not handle the ball moving up the court. My opinion.