Lady Vols basketball earned its first win of the year on Friday, beating ETSU 97-47 in Knoxville. A 50-point win over a Division I opponent should be all smiles and highfives in the locker room, right?
Not quite. Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell arrived to her postgame press conference with a clear displeasure of what transpired on the court. Sure, her team handled business, but she couldn’t look past the frustrating mistakes that lingered from the season-opening loss to NC State just days prior.
To begin her press conference, she addressed her anger in her opening statement. With just one off day ahead of a road clash at UT Martin, it was not what she wanted to see from her team.
“I don’t think that is necessarily the step we needed to take after the NC State loss,” Caldwell said. “We don’t really have a lot of time in our schedule to fix it. We have a one-day turnaround before our next game and then we have a little bit of break and hopefully we can clean some things up and start looking like who we have been for the majority of our preseason.”
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There’s a long list of what went wrong in the Lady Vols’ dominant win.
Tennessee was nearly out-rebounded by its much smaller opponent. UT settled for 38 3-point attempts, and made just 31.6% of them, despite Caldwell’s pleas to get downhill and score at the rim. The half-court offense was stagnant and, overall, didn’t meet her standards. The Lady Vols fouled far too much, putting ETSU in the bonus while being whistled 23 times in the game. There were selfish characters who weren’t willing to move the ball and be a connector on offense.
That’s just the things that got brought up in the press conference, too. There’s likely more that wasn’t uncovered that she isn’t pleased with.
This doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise to her, though. After the loss to NC State, she was excited about the film she could show the team from a close game that was decided by just a single possession. However, during the following days, her team failed to respond.
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“I did not like our response after the NC State game,” Caldwell said. “I did not like our practice after the NC State game, so I’m not one bit surprised that I don’t like this game. And it’s probably growing pains, it’s probably a little bit of selfishness, it’s probably a little bit of we didn’t come in and try to fix what we needed to fix vs. NC State.
“And we have to grow up and we have to make it about winning. We have to be obsessed with not fouling, we have to be obsessed with boxing out, we have to be obsessed with sharing the basketball. And we have a very good team on paper, but if they want to continue to just take days off and not move with a sense of urgency, it’s going to be a very long and frustrating year. Today, personally, for me was frustrating.”
With just one day before the game at UT Martin, Caldwell plans on watching film on themselves and then the Skyhawks. Then, it’s work on the offense, before getting scout-team looks in. The issue is it can’t be too much with a game played on Friday, a trip across the state and a game on Sunday.
Tip-off is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET and will air on ESPN+. UT Martin is 0-1 this season with a 57-54 loss to North Alabama on Monday. The game is dubbed the ‘Pat Summitt Heritage Classic’, with Summitt playing her college ball for the Skyhawks.
