All season, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball standout Taylor Hall (New Tazewell, Tenn.) has proven her ability on the basketball court. She was selected the Southern Conference Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year as well as the league’s Most Outstanding Player in the conference tournament.
Now she adds North Carolina Education Lottery Southern Conference Student-Athlete of the Week to her trophy case.
Hall, a Rehabilitation Sciences major, carries a 3.636 overall GPA and has plans to attend medical school upon her graduation in May. She is the third UTC student-athlete honored this year and was a three-time SoCon Player of the Week.
Over the last week, Hall led Chattanooga to three straight wins in defense of its Southern Conference Tournament title. She scored in double figures in each game and recorded her 13th double-double of the year with 18 points and 11 rebounds against Elon in the SoCon Tournament semifinal matchup. Hall averaged 15.3 points and 9.0 rebounds per game while dishing out 13 assists over three games. She added five steals and four blocked shots to her stats to earn a spot on the league’s all-tournament first team.
Hall was also recognized by the NCAA on Tuesday as one of the “Starting Five”. Her performance in the SoCon Tournament was named one of the Top Five from last week’s conference championships.
She has climbed to 20th on the Chattanooga all-time scoring chart with 1,164 career points and needs just nine to pass Karen Mills (1977-81) for 19th. She ranks eighth on the career rebounding chart and just topped the 800 mark on Monday in the SoCon Championship game. She is third at UTC for blocked shots and is just shy of the Top 10 for steals.
Chattanooga earned the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, its sixth in nine years, and will learns its fate Monday, March 17 along with the rest of the country. Chattanooga earned a 10-seed in 2004 and went on to defeat 7-seed Rutgers in the opening round at McKenzie Arena before falling to second-seeded Vanderbilt. UTC has been a 12 seed seven times and a 13 seed three times. This will be Chattanooga’s 12th trip to the “Big Dance”.