Keyen Green
Keyen Green’s knee injury turned out to be serious, season-ending serious.
Tennessee’s 6-foot-1 graduate post player suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee during Sunday’s 63-55 women’s basketball victory at Georgia and will be out for the remainder of the season. Coach Kellie Harper made the announcement on Tuesday, referring to the news as a “gut punch.”
Green, who missed most of last season with a right knee injury after transferring to UT from Liberty, was averaging seven points, 3.2 rebounds and 14.6 minutes per game, primarily as center Tamari Key’s backup.
Teammate Jordan Horston on Sunday described both players as being “major factors in our team.”
“The game is different when they’re in,” Horston said.
Green distinguished herself more with her intangibles than her stats. Lady Vols freshman Sara Puckett earlier this season described Green as the best leader with whom she’s ever played and said she’s “literally like a coach.” Assistant coach Samantha Williams echoed the sentiment Tuesday on Twitter, saying: “One of the best leaders I’ve been around.”
Williams is in her 21st season of college coaching. She’s been an assistant at such programs as Louisville, Duke, DePaul and Auburn.
Harper said Green still will be impactful in this regard.
“She will continue to be a great leader for us,” Harper said, “but it will just be in a different role.”
Her on-court presence still needs to be replaced, however. Harper considered the big picture and was happy to have Tess Darby back at practice on Tuesday. She missed Sunday’s game because of COVID protocols. With her missing, Rae Burrell returned to the starting lineup for the first time since going down in the season opener with a knee injury.
“We need all our options,” Harper said. “Without Keyen out there, we are going to need to get creative on what we are going to do and what our lineups are going to look like.”
The two candidates to fill Green’s support role are junior Emily Saunders and freshman Karoline Striplin. They played a combined four minutes on Sunday. Striplin grabbed two rebounds in just one minute of play. Neither player has played more than six minutes in an SEC game. Striplin did it twice but also didn’t play in two other conference games.
Given the backups’ resumes, Key likely will be called on to play more minutes. But she’ll have to avoid foul trouble to do it.
Key, who leads the nation in blocked shots with 73, was named Tuesday to the watch list for the Naismith women’s defensive player of the year.
“Our whole defensive package is built around her and what we are doing, we rely on her,” Harper said. “She cleans up a lot of mistakes, and she alters offensive game plans before the game starts."
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Dan Fleser is a 1980 graduate of the University of Missouri, who covered University of Tennessee athletics from 1988-2019. He can be reached at ddanfleser3@gmail.com.