University of Tennessee Athletics
Graduation Legacy Continues
May 07, 2015 | Women's Basketball
By Brian Rice
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
UTSports.com
In their four years at Tennessee, Cierra Burdick, Isabelle Harrison and Ariel Massengale compiled amazing numbers, but the legacy and the foundation that the Lady Vol seniors leave are bigger than those places in the record book.
The Class of 2015 won 113 games at Tennessee with a Southeastern Conference record of 54-10. UT won four SEC Championships -- two regular season, two tournament -- with this senior class and advanced to a Sweet 16 and three Elite Eights. They added another number together as a class: Three, as in three college degrees, continuing the perfect graduation rate for four-year players at Tennessee.
Along with rising redshirt junior Andraya Carter, who is graduating early this summer and receiving her diploma on Friday, all 127 Lady Vols who have concluded (or will conclude) their playing careers at Tennessee have earned degrees.
The expectations for the 2015 class started before they reached campus, as they typically do for the highly-rated classes that the Lady Volunteer program usually signs. All three players were ranked in the top 30 nationally, with Burdick and Massengale the third- and fourth-ranked players, respectively.
Pat Summitt, now head coach emeritus, kept those expectations high when she named Massengale the starting point guard before she ever got to campus.
When a friend told her to go read the quote from Summitt, Massengale was nervous, but not for the reason you might think.
"Not nervous for the expectation," she said. "Nervous that I knew I was coming into a team that senior-heavy, and I didn't want them to see that and think negatively about me. Coach Summitt was very clear about that was what she wanted, but I was going to have to work hard for it, and it wasn't going to be given to me. It wasn't easy, but the coaching staff and my teammates were very supportive in helping me accomplish that goal."
Massengale started 24 games as a freshman, becoming just the 14th player to start her first game at UT with a spot in the starting lineup against Pepperdine. She dished out a UT freshman-record 162 assists en route to freshman All-America honors and a spot on the SEC All-Freshman Team.
But what defined their first year at Tennessee was the fact that it was Summitt's last. Summitt revealed before the season that she had been diagnosed with early-onset Dementia, Alzheimer's type, and stepped down as head coach a couple of weeks after delivering an emotional speech in the locker room following the Lady Vols' 2012 NCAA Elite Eight loss to Baylor.
"I was scared that Tennessee wasn't going to be Tennessee anymore," Harrison said of her feeling in the locker room that night. "I was scared that all of the pressure that I had wanted all year was finally on me and was scared about how I was going to perform."
Harrison had to take the biggest step of the three going into that second season, which would be Holly Warlick's first at the Helm. Massengale had the staring experience, Burdick had played in all 36 games and become one of the top players off the bench as a freshman, but Harrison was not used to much more than spot duty as a freshman. She appeared in 30 games, but averaged just over eight minutes a game.
"You can't be afraid to push yourself," Harrison said of playing alongside her highly-rated teammates. "Coming in with that class, I was timid and shy around them in practice. All throughout high school you heard those two names a lot, and I wanted to be up there with them. I surrounded myself with people that believed in me, and I began to believe in myself. That is what really pushed me over that hump of confidence and made me successful."
Year two began on the road at Chattanooga, which quickly became a game that they would never forget, for all the wrong reasons.
"Holly and I looked at each other and kind of had the same expression, like `What did I get into?'" said Harrison of the 80-71 loss to the Mocs. "It's crazy to think about how I felt in that moment and how I feel now, just remembering not being sure what was going to happen and not being sure what my role was going to be in the program. The year before, I really didn't even play and now I was being counted on to step into a starting role and carry the team as a big."
The team more than rallied from the tough start, finishing with a 27-8 record, an SEC Championship and an appearance in the Elite Eight. It sent a statement that Tennessee was not going anywhere, that the Holly Warlick era was going to have the same standards and on-court presence that Summitt's teams had. It would be up to this class to continue that statement throughout their careers.
"The ups and downs, each year brought some type of different adversity," Burdick said. "We didn't necessarily reap the rewards of the transition by getting back to a Final Four, but we laid the foundation for what's to come. We hope that others can see that. We grew a lot as players, but more so as people and I think that's important."
That was a responsibility that the class did not see coming when they were recruited, but it became a banner that they were proud to carry.
"It was definitely not what the three of us expected, but we're grateful to have been a part of it," said Massengale. "We weren't able to get to a Final Four, but just knowing what we started, how we kept the tradition going so that future classes can take this program back to where it's supposed to be."
And there is the one unfortunate side to the expectations that come with playing at Tennessee. Though the class finished its tenure with a laundry list of accomplishments, it is the one that they did not get that still eats at them.
"It's something that we miss out on coming to a program like Tennessee," Massengale said of the muted celebrations for conference titles." You come here and everyone expects to win a national championship. When you look back at the SEC Championships and the individual awards and accomplishments, we've done a lot of great things. When we look back, we see everything we accomplished and we're proud of it.
Burdick sees it similarly.
"It speaks for the program that we are, the people we have, the tradition that we have that we won four SEC Championships and got rings and that's the goal for most programs," said Burdick. "Being at Tennessee, that's one of our goals, but we wanted the big one. To be in the Elite Eight three times, you can't look back at your career and say it was a failure just because we didn't get to a Final Four. I was able to do things and accomplish things that people pray for the opportunity to do."
The lessons learned during their time as Lady Vols set the stage not only for the program into the future, but for the three individually.
"I learned that you can work extremely hard and prepare as best as you can and it still might not work out," Burdick said. "I think we prepared each and every year and we fell short, we didn't reach our goal. With all the adversity we went through we still found a way to be successful. Izzy was a first-round WNBA Draft pick. All three of us were selected. I think all that we've learned and how we've grown is as big as any championship."
Despite losing the final weeks of her senior season to a knee injury, Harrison was still one of 12 players invited to attend the 2015 WNBA Draft, where she was selected in the first round by the Phoenix Mercury.
"It was something to take a step back and realize that out of all of the players in college, only 12 of us got to go, and I was one of those, even with my injury," she said. "That says a lot about what people think of you, and it says a lot about my play."
As they walk across the stage to put a stamp on their time at Tennessee, the three exit with heads held high, knowing the Lady Volunteer program is as strong as ever under Warlick, ready to take the next step.
"It's a sense of pride," said Massengale. "We may not have a banner hanging up, but we know that we left our legacy."
