Lady Vols basketball got its NCAA Tournament draw on Sunday night. 10-seed Tennessee will travel to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to play 7-seed NC State in the opening round.
On Monday, UT head coach Kim Caldwell met with the media. She was asked about her reaction to the draw, the rematch with NC State and more.
Here’s what she said.
More From RTI: WATCH: Lady Vols Basketball HC Kim Caldwell Reacts to NCAA Tournament Draw
On the team’s reaction to the NCAA Tournament draw
“Yeah, I think that their reaction was the reaction that you always want to see as a coach. You want to have some life. You want to be fired up, and you want March to matter, and for you to be excited. And when you have five days of practice, you’re just excited to get an opponent.”
On if she was surprised she got a first-round rematch
“Yeah, I was surprised with that. You see the boards, you see different scenarios, you look at it. I was surprised with our matchup. We didn’t have that one picked.”
On if she likes having a rematch
“I don’t love having to play a team that we’ve already played, but it’s not a game where it was — I think we’re both very different teams. We’ve both been through a lot since that game, so it’s gonna be kind of not a rematch, if that makes sense. We’re both different.”
On if she looks back at the first game
“We do. We look back at it, and we look and see. We had a lot of individual players get a lot better since then. They’ve had a lot of individual players get a lot better since then. It wasn’t a good game. You go and you look at the percentages, and you look at the game all the way around, it wasn’t a great game. And, again, I think we’re both different, but you do look at it.”
On who has improved the most since the NC State game
“I think Nya has.”
On how Nya Robertson has improved
“She was taking some wild shots at the rim. She is much more confident. She’s playing much more under control. She’s more of a leader for us now. I think she again has her feet under her and understands a lot more. And so going back and watching the tape, our freshmen have all grown up, and then that’s fun to see. But I think Nya is a completely different player.”
On if they’ve watched back the first game as a team
“We’re going to.”
On what she thinks Nya Robertson’s reaction will be to seeing herself
“I’ll be interested to see what she thinks about it and then kind of get what we’ve told her all year, if she can kind of go back and look at the old version of herself and see that.”
On if she thinks NC State is better now
“Yeah. I think that they guard better than they did game one. I think that they rebound better. I think that they have, again, two dominant guards, and obviously, on the inside, we didn’t do a very good job rebounding with Khamil and we have to fix that.”
On what the team’s focus has been since the SEC Tournament
“Again, it feels really good to have an opponent. You’re trying to get your legs back under you. You’re trying to get some juice back. You’re trying to get as much skill as you can. It’s a long break. It’s very different than the men, where you have a lot of practices, and so trying to get back to who we wanna be and playing fast and again, getting some rest, but while still trying to get a feel back for how we want to rotate and things.”
On the attitude of the team after the SEC Tournament
“We took a couple days off, and then when we got back, we got back to work. We had a couple days that were just purely individual skill, and I think that’s kind of a nice break from the traditional practices that you have for four straight months of where, okay, we can work on you, we can do some ball handling, we can do some finishing, we can do some one-on-one, we can play some three-on-three. Really just getting some conditioning in, but working on individual skill and then getting back to it. Didn’t have practice guys. Our practice guys came back last night, and so they were excited. We had some juice into the practice going right into the selection show, and then we should have a full practice squad today, which they definitely help make us better, and they like going against the guys much better than themselves.”
On who stood out at practice this week
“I think the twins have really locked in. It’s exciting to see the young ones, how excited they are. And sometimes you take this for granted. Sometimes you take playing in March as, ‘Oh, it’s supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be here.’ And then we have a lot of players that have never done it. And I think that was the best part about last night was to see how excited they were. This means something. And a lot of players go their entire career, and they never get to see a selection show, and they never get to keep playing. It’s a lot of things that are done.”
On not taking a NCAA Tournament appearance for granted
“I’m in a situation too where throughout my career, we’ve always got in, and we’ve always known we were gonna get in, and sometimes you have to have those conversations with yourself of, ‘Hey, you still have to try to enjoy today. You still have to try to make the most of this and, and make a memory here.’ And, you know, sometimes in this profession, you have some selection shows that aren’t fun. But they should all be fun. They should all be fun.”
On younger players helping keep the streak alive
“Yeah. And they helped to do it, and I think that they understand that, and I think that they wanted to videotape it on their phones, and they wanted to record it, and they wanted to have those memories, and they deserve that. They earned that.”
On if she’s surprised her team didn’t dance on the selection show
“Yeah, I was a little concerned. We talked about it a little bit beforehand. But I think it was authentically them, and it was good.”
On if she danced
“Absolutely not.”
On Deniya Prawl’s injury status
“Yeah. She should be back today in practice. And then, Janiah’s a little banged up. She’ll be limited today. Other than that, everyone’s full go.”
On if this is new life for her team
“I hope so. I hope so. I think, again, you are going through spring break. You’re going not on a great note coming off the SEC Tournament, and you’re just trying to get through some things, and then we’re coming off of a good practice from last night. Now we have an opponent. We have an opponent that we’ve already played. We have motivation to try to make up for something that we didn’t do well the first time. And I think hopefully, if I know my team, that they’re gonna be fired up as we walk into that film room to try to go do better than we did round one.”
On the team getting back to what it’s good at
“I think we had a stretch there where we looked really good, and we definitely didn’t sustain it. We’re not chasing something we haven’t seen. We’re chasing something that we have done. It’s really easy to get lost in it and say, ‘Oh, nope, that doesn’t work.’ Well, we need to just get back to a version that we were there for a month. And that’s kind of what this break has been about.”
On experience from making the tournament run last year
“Yeah. I think that last year we did a really good job as a team. We were really senior-led. It was all about the team. It was all about, ‘Hey, let’s get as far as we can go.’ We had a common goal as a team to make it to the Sweet 16, Elite Eight, last year, and no matter what, everyone was gonna to do that. We did a really good job last year of turning the page, and we had better energy. We looked like a different team. We came out with great energy to start our first two round games. I’m hopeful we that we can get there with this team.”
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