Lady Vols basketball is back on the road, but much further away from home this time. While Kim Caldwell’s Tennessee squad has already played a neutral site matchup in Greensboro with NC State and road games at UT Martin and MTSU, this time, it’ll be a flight to California.
There, the Lady Vols will match up with UCLA and Stanford. Before the trip, Caldwell spoke with the media. She answered questions about Janiah Barker playing at her old school, where her team has improved and more.
Here’s what she said.
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On where she feels the team has improved the past two games
“I think our press defense looks the way it should. We’re flying around. We’re getting steals. Our back looks better. It’s not perfect, but it’s never gonna be perfect. But I think the energy and effort is different than it has been in games. I think we’re moving better.”
On Nya Robertson’s 10 made threes trickling across the team
“Yeah. I think it helps our offense. People have to guard her now. Her shooting percentage wasn’t very good going into the game. And so now it’s higher and people know that she’s a threat. And we have a few more people that are not shooting great from three on paper, but they are in practice and they have that as a weapon. So the more people that we can get over that hump, the better our offense will look.”
On the team’s ball movement on offense
“I think we’re moving it better. I think that we’re just not seeing the assists show up on the stat sheet because the shots aren’t going in. It’s looking a little bit better, and then you still have times where young people are young people, and they see such a scoring margin, and they sort of take bad shots down the stretch. I think our last two games, our offense has started the way we wanted to.”
On what stands out about UCLA, the trip out west
“It’s gonna be a big trip. We’re gonna have to grow up real fast. I think what I’m looking forward to the most is an intentional week of practice going into a really big road trip. And we have to mature. We have to grow. I think that there will be a sense of urgency in practice going forward. I hope that there is. If not, it’s gonna be a miserable trip. But I’m excited about that.
“I’m excited to really see where we’re at. I think UCLA has a legitimate chance to win a national championship, and we’re going there, and we’re playing them on their home floor. And I think that that, again, is a measuring stick, and that’s why we’re playing the schedule is to see where we’re at and how we need to improve. If we’re not where we are at, where we’re gonna finish, we’re gonna get better than how we’re playing right now. They’re a pretty polished team. They’re a pretty veteran team. So we need to be ready.”
On where the team is at learning scouts, understanding game plans
“I think they’re doing a really good job with their scouts. They’re picking up quickly. They’re taking notes here in scouts. They’re pretty focused. They ask the right questions. I think we could do a better job of having them watch their own film, study their opponents on their own, other than the film we provide. Just making sure, hey, we ask you a question about this thing. You’re watching basketball a ton. It’s on TV, we’re watching it. We know about our opponent. But I think they’re doing a pretty good job handling that load.”
On the dynamics of travleing to California
“I mean, I don’t love it. I don’t ever really wanna have to fight a time change and fight jet lag and have to worry about that. But if you make it far in the NCAA Tournament, you’re gonna have to do that. You’re gonna have to travel to the other side of the country, and you’re gonna have to be able to adapt. And if we do make it far, then at least we will have done this once. But, again, they’re young people. I think as adults, we probably overcoach that and think about that more than they do. Who knows what they do at night, and they go to bed late. They wake up late. I don’t know if the time change is gonna affect them as much as it is our staff.”
On getting Alyssa Latham back in action
“It’s great. She’s such a big part of our team and a great person and to be able to have her back, get a game under her belt going into the west coast stretch that we’re about to have, we’re gonna need her. We’re gonna need her in a big way and I hope that we can get that out of her.”
On Janiah Barker going back to play her former school
“You know, I don’t tell Janiah anything. We just talked about UCLA as a small group of players and me right before coming down here, and we talked about what’s important. We talked about what they see, what we need to focus on this week. And a lot of it is working on us, making sure that we’ve matured as a group, making sure that we take steps, just doing the little things in practice, like listening, running from drill to drill, just making sure that are poised and under control because we are young and they are not. And we’re on the road, and it’s gonna be a tough environment where we can’t break.”
On visiting Lady Vols signee Oliviyah Edwards on her birthday
“It was a situation where I was supposed to go this morning and the schedule changed. So it made sense to go last night. And anytime you can go to Florida and watch some basketball in the evening, there’s worse ways to spend your birthday.”
On how her bigs will handle Lauren Betts
“Our bigs haven’t seen a lot of bigs. Our team hasn’t seen a lot of bigs. And so we’ll find out in the first three minutes of that game of what our bigs need to improve upon. We’re gonna start preparing for that now just because, again, it’s something we haven’t seen, but it is something we’re gonna see all of SEC play.”
On if she enjoys playing tough opponents early
“I think our players do. I think our players do. I think it’s important to mix your schedule and have opponents that make you be focused. I like the practice that lead up to a big game. I like the sense of urgency you get out of your players. I like that they know that they have to be sharp in order to have results that they want. I appreciate that part. The game? No. But the lead-up? Yes.”
On putting schedules together
“We wanna play the hardest schedule we can with winnable games. And this year, we’re still not on the right side of our scheduling when you schedule so many years out in advance. We’re still playing some games that were scheduled before I got here. And then we took some games last year just because we had to, and we were trying to finish those out. You never wanna be on the road this much, as much as we are. And we wanna try to right that ship next year and then even it out going forward. But I think that we have two or three games, maybe four games, that were scheduled before we got here. So we’re just trying to, about next year or the year after, I think our schedule will probably look the way we want it to.”
On the benefit of already having road experience
“It helps. I mean, it was something, from a scrimmage we were in a hotel room, so we have some hotel time under our belt. We know how to travel, what we do on the road. It’s gonna be completely different, but the routine of it shouldn’t change.”
