It’s finally time for Lady Vols basketball to begin its SEC slate. On Thursday, Tennessee will open up the conference schedule with Florida, scheduled for 2 p.m. ET, airing on SECN+.
Ahead of the game, Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell met with the media to give her thoughts. She was asked about the Gators, her confidence level, what needs to change and more.
Here’s what she said.
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On the biggest point of emphasis heading into conference play
“I think our biggest point of emphasis is kind of the same thing I left you guys with, just play as a team, play through adversity, be better teammates, put a premium on winning, have winning behaviors.”
On if the team is where she wants it to be before SEC play
“I don’t think we’re ready for conference play.”
On where the focus and energy has been since Christmas break
“I think it’s kind of been the same in that we’ve had some days where we were really good, we play hard. I think we are turning that we’re at least self-aware of our behaviors now of being a bad teammate or maybe the feedback that we give in practice. And again, those are the lapses we are seeing in games, so I think we’re at least aware of those and watch a lot of film on it. We’ve watched a lot of film on being a good teammate, extra effort, giving high fives. So I think they’re starting to see it.”
On freshman point guard Mia Pauldo
“I think that we could get even more out of her, in that she can take more shots. She’s definitely our best three-point shooter, so she’ll help us space the floor. I think she could shoot more from the inside out when she gets them. She definitely has some point guard mindset about how to drive it and create for other people. We talked about wanting to, she needs more assists. She’s remarkable in the turnover category for a freshman, but just still finding ways to draw two and create that shot for somebody else, and then they got to knock it down.”
On what challenges Florida presents
“I think it’s going to be a very even matchup. We’re both athletic. We both want to play fast. And they’re gonna want to go to the rim. They have great players that we’re gonna have to sit down and guard as a unit, which is, again, I mean, we try to explain to our freshmen what the SEC is every single night, and that just gets harder and harder as the season goes on. But they’re not gonna understand it until they live it.”
On Florida’s Liv McGill
“It’s gonna be a team effort here ’cause we can’t do it one-on-one. We don’t have anyone that can do it one-on-one for 40 minutes. I don’t think anyone in the country has somebody that can do it one-on-one for 40 minutes. So we all have to be on high alert around her, and we have to do it together.”
On why the team isn’t ready for SEC play
“The majority of that is just me, and we could practice for two years and I still wouldn’t think we’re ready for SEC play. Just putting consistent days together has been an issue for this team. And making sure that we have time to stack days and put that in there. But I don’t think that there’s a coach in the country right now that’s like, ‘Whoo, we’re going into SEC play, we’re ready.'”
On teams adjusting to her system in her second season
“Yeah, it’s really interesting because the majority of programs that I have played in before, you play everyone twice in the same year. And so you’re playing teams for the second time, and it’s year two. And so they will look a little different, you will look a little different, but you will at least have scouted. You’ll know what they want to do. So, yes, they know what’s coming, but we also know what their press offense looks like. We know what their tendencies are. So I’d say it’s probably an even playing field on that.”
On if she’s had to deal with players not being good teammates before
“I think you always deal with it. You just never deal with it this late in the game.”
On if she’s okay with the game against Florida being a track meet
“Normally, I would feel great about it. Normall,y that’s all we would want. Well, our transition offense hasn’t been great, and our transition defense hasn’t been great. And so if we can do those things the way teams I find in the past have done it, then I think we always want it to be a track meet. We always want to go. We always think that we can win that way. But we have to take a big step, because the games that have been track meets, we’ve gotten whooped.”
On if Talaysia Cooper has been mentally in the right spot in recent practices
“Yeah, I do. I think she’s trying.”
On the premium she’s putting on sharing the ball
“Yeah, we have to share the ball. So we’ve done childlike drills in practice, so where the first time you touch it, you can’t try to shoot it. You can’t create your shot off the first pass. You have to share it with a teammate. And I think it was alarmingly hard for them to understand that and grasp that and do that. And hopefully, that’s opened their eyes of every time you guys catch the ball, the first thing you try to do is just shoot or create your own shot as opposed to playing within the offense. And I think once we did that and we’ve done a lot of things like that that coaches do. ‘Well, if you gotta make four passes, you gotta make five passes. You gotta swing the ball for 20 seconds.’ But when you really say, ‘Hey, you can’t score. You have to create a shot for somebody else. You have to run some offense that we have and that we practiced before you can shoot it again,’ I think that they’ve been better teammates in that regard. They’ve been creating space for other people. They’ve been talking. They’ve been working together a little bit better.”
On if that has helped slow down the game for them
“Yeah, I think it slows them down and I think it helps them with their shot selection. I think it helps them realize, alright, I can. Again, we’ve said this over and over and over in the film room, we said it here, you can get a contested three each any time. Some of you guys can get a wide open three any time, so you don’t have to shoot the first one you have.”
On how the team has worked through adversity in non-conference play
“We haven’t had it yet in a game. We have not had it… Eh, that’s probably unfair. I think we had it in Stanford. I think we blew it and then came back and came together and shared the ball late in that game. So we have had it. We have seen it on the road against a tough opponent. So we can do it there. We just have to do it consistently. And that’s really been what we’ve been working on in practice. If you can’t make it through practice without melting down, then you’re never gonna make it through a game ever. And just really cleaning those behaviors up across the board.”
On post defense against Florida
“Our posts are really gonna be important for us. Our last game, I didn’t love our post defense and I think it’s spotty. I think they did a really good job at UCLA, our post players did, and then our guards didn’t. Again, it’s just conversations we’re having with the young ones, like, ‘You can’t miss a box out. It’s gonna cost us the game. You can’t take a play off. It’s gonna cost us the game.’ And you have the older ones that are nodding their head like they understand, and the young ones are looking at you like, ‘What are you talking about?’ But those – you can’t go for a ball with one hand. You cannot do that in the SEC. They’re gonna go with two and they’re gonna yank it from you.
“And so again, just really tightening that up. We’ve talked a lot about it at the beginning of the season, your stat line doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve done to this point, what you like, what you don’t like, people are only looking at your conference-only stats because you have some people that have played a tough schedule, you have some people that haven’t played anyone yet. And nobody cares about what you’ve done up until this point. Our season starts now.”
