Lady Vols basketball hit the road to square off with MTSU and came out with a dominant 85-41 win. After the game, Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell met with the media to give her thoughts.
She was asked about a pair of missing players, where the offense is at, Janiah Barker’s production and more.
Here’s what she said.
More From RTI: Why Lady Vols Transfer Jersey Wolfenbarger Didn’t Play Against MTSU
Opening statement
“I think we played a little bit better in spurts tonight. We’ll have some good clips to show. We really just need to take a step, and I think we took that step.”
On this being a younger MTSU team
“Yeah. I think that they were really physical. They were well coached. They run their sets extremely well. They are disciplined on the boards. They gave us a lot of trouble there, and I just think it’s a tough matchup size-wise, height-wise, different leagues. With the way that college athletics is changing, the gap is just gonna get bigger and bigger. But it’s one of the best high major programs in the country for a reason, and they’ll continue to do that.”
On the series with MTSU growing women’s basketball
“I think it’s great for our state. I will say a lot about the fans here that it’s obviously something — coming from a lower level, it’s I really appreciate a fan base like this that shows up and shows out. And when you can play at, maybe not Tennessee, but you’re still playing in front of 8,000 people every night. I think that’s remarkable. I think that’s good for the game. I think that says so much about women’s sports in the state of Tennessee, and it was a really cool environment to be in. And it was the first time we’ve traveled in the state where we haven’t really had a whole crowd. So that says a lot about this fan base.”
On Deniya Prawl playing well
“She’s a great player. It takes time. I think that young people get so caught up in one game or two games. I mean, our overall body of work is tiny, and so it’s gonna take her some time. She’s a great player. She did really put her head down and attack the rim, and we’ll have some good clips to show her. I know her three is not where she wants it to be, but I think her hitting that first one maybe let her breathe a little bit because I think the more and more she missed, the more she piled on herself, and she just needs to go out there and play free. And she was really big for us on both ends of the court. But what she does so much that I appreciate is she just goes against offensive rebounds. And she doesn’t pout. She doesn’t complain if she doesn’t touch it, and there’s a lot of times she’s open. If she doesn’t touch it, she just goes and gets the offensive rebound for her teammates. And she’s doing that as a freshman, and you can win with players that are selfless like that.”
On if she has an updated on Alyssa Latham
“We’re hoping that she’ll return next game.”
On why Jersey Wolfenbarger didn’t play
“She had strep.”
On what let Janiah Barker have a good game
“She has had some good practices back to back to back to really build those up, and she made the right play. She didn’t try to force it. She took what the game gave her, which I think is gonna be the biggest thing for her because it’s gonna give her a lot. She can score multiple ways. And so she didn’t try to force it. She didn’t make up her mind. She read the defense and think just continuing to get that out of her and teaching her how to do that at game speed, she’ll just continue to get better and better.”
On if the half-court offense was more what she envisioned or needs work
“I mean, it’s gonna look completely different once our threes start going in. And then people can’t clog the pain, and then you can play the way we wanna play. And we just have to be patient and know at some point they’re gonna fall.”
On balancing aggression and slowing down with Jaida Civil
“I think you continue to do it, teach her on film, to show her and have her slow down. It will click for her. We need her. She’s a big piece of what we wanna do, and we need her to get more shots. We need her to — she is kinda like Janai. She can get anything, but she just needs to take what the game gets her. And once she can kinda figure out that flow, then she’ll be better off for it. But I think a lot of her mistakes tonight were she was just trying to do it all at once.”
On if the effort was better against MTSU
“Our effort and energy is there when the ball’s going in the hole. It was going in the hole early. So I do think we did a good job of maintaining that. I do hope that we learn that lesson once and we don’t have to learn it again for a couple months. I think that our defense did fuel a lot of our offense tonight. Our press looked better. We were flying around.”
On the week of practice heading into the game
“For us, I think it was a good week of practice. I think that we need to continue to work on our spacing. Our offense is not where it wants to be, but all I wanted in this game was to take a step. You can’t do it all at once. You need to take a step in the right direction. I think we did.”
On where they took a step
“I think that we shared the ball better to an extent. We wanted to get more assists. I don’t know what we ended up with. I don’t have a stat. 14. And we wanted 16. 16 was our goal. 20 is usually our goal. 16 is usually what my teams normally average. So we wanted to get 16. We didn’t quite get that. Had we shot a little bit better, we probably would have gotten the 20. Our offensive rebounds were good. I think we were close to 50% on that. So really just going to get those. Our pressure looked really good at times, which created some easy offense. And then we had fun, right? When everyone is contributing, you have multiple people that are scoring, and people are having fun and the energy is better. And I think all of that was something that we needed.”
