Lady Vols basketball is turning the page to SEC Tournament. However, Kaiya Wynn’s departure from the program stole a good bit of headlines beforehand.
Ahead of the tournament, Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell met with the media. She was asked about Wynn, the SEC Tournament and loss to Vanderbilt.
Here’s what she said.
More From RTI: Kim Caldwell Reacts to Kaiya Wynn’s Departure from Lady Vols Basketball
On Kaiya Wynn leaving the program
“I haven’t really dove into the public conversation about it. We’ll miss her. She was loved in this program. Again, we respect her decision, but we kind of have to turn the page and focus on the SEC Tournament.”
On if she’s concerned Wynn’s decision could affect the team
“I think we have been resilient all year, and we’re just in another situation where we’re gonna have to continue to do that.”
On if Wynn’s decision caught her off guard
“It kind of caught me off guard.”
On why the relationship deteriorated with Wynn
“Not that I see other than playing time.”
On Danny White publicly giving her a vote of confidence
“It means a lot. I think he and I have talked through this, and we know what we’re trying to build here, and we know what we thought this season was gonna be, and we know what it is to this point, but there’s a lot of season left. And we can have bigger conversations about the future going forward, but right now I wanna focus on the team that I have going into SEC play as a six seed and trying to do as well as we can there, and then going into the NCAA tournament. We’re in the best part of the season right now, and I think we talked yesterday as a team about how our schedule was really back-loaded, and everyone had to go through this.
“Everyone had to play these teams on their (schedule), and we had to play them all at once. We had to play them in a clump. I think Oklahoma played them in a clump early. So we had to get through that, and we have to see now how that built us and how that shaped us.”
On the team’s repsonse to that conversation
“I think we did a lot of educating of where we ended up as the 6-seed. And even if we had beaten two teams that on paper we should have beaten, we still don’t finish higher than a 6-seed if we don’t win the Oklahoma game the way the tiebreakers work. And I think when you reframe things for them like that, it’s kind of like, ‘Okay. Well, we were nine last year, and we made it to a Sweet 16,’ and I think our returners understood that. And I think just educating them on there was a clump that was deadlocked at 8-8, and we were the best of the 8-8. And again, our schedule was back-heavy, and our preseason was my fault. I picked that. I didn’t pick the SEC schedule. It is what it is. We played them all at once, let’s see how strong we are now.”
On the team’s resiliency
“In order to get here, in order to make it this far as a basketball player, you’ve always been handed some type of adversity, and they’re the cream of the crop, and they know how to do it. And they love basketball, and they get along with each other, and I think they know what the SEC is. I think they understand that now that they’ve been through it, and now we’re going into the NCAA Tournament, and there’s not a harder team in America or the world that we can play that we haven’t played.”
On the team loving basketball
“It’s huge. It’s huge because you go through this. We’re on month 10. I think the other day I said seven, but no, we’ve been doing this since June. We’re on month 10. You have to love the game.”
On if anyone has stepped up in the lockerroom after Wynn left
“I think going forward it’ll be Alyssa and Nya, and I think that they’re just gonna be able to be level-headed leaders and tell the truth and be honest and hopefully help us be the team we wanna be in March.”
On the way the team has led
“I think they’re unflappable. I think they are consistent. I think they work hard every day. I think that they have the team’s best interests in heart, and I think that, again, they’re just really good human beings that come and do what they’re supposed to do every day, and they’ve earned the respect of everyone around them.”
On Nya Robertson playing well down the stretch
“I wonder if she’s playing the best basketball she’s played. Her efficiency has gotten tremendously better. She’s out there having fun, playing well on the defensive end. It’s been so good for us offensively to have her back playing the way we knew she could.”
On having trinkets for the team as rewards
“I think that we could do a better job of remembering that when things go south. But I think that at the end of the day, they’re 18 to 22-year-olds, so you can give them a trinket, they like it.”
On March Madness bringing a new mindset
“Yeah, I think it does. This is the best part. When you’re a basketball player, this is what you play for. This is what you wanna do. So I think that they’ll be fired up and ready to go.”
On the defensive focus
“I think our help-side defense has not been good. We have been blowing some scout-specific things about going under when we should go over. Switching up our ball screen coverage, we’ve worked on that. Just to have some different things to work on. Our one-on-one defense, again, making sure that we can get them to pick it up without going where they wanna go, team defense, getting in your gaps, helping when we can. But being able to do it consistently, I think, again, we went into our third quarters, and we looked at them to see if it was an offensive trend. There’s some minor offensive trends, but the majority of it is coming on the defensive end.”
On Jaida Civil’s speed
“It’s huge. I mean, she’s one of the best players in the country at going downhill and playing, and she’s been playing more free and with more confidence, and you’ve been able to really see the real Jaida, and need to clean it up maybe a little bit, but I’d rather have that version of her than the version of the her.”
On the third quarter vs. Vanderbilt
“I went and watched it live. I clipped it. We had it ready, and it’s just not as obvious as I wanted it to be. I thought it was going to be, ‘Okay, the ball’s sticking. We’re taking one pass. We’re back to one pass, jack.’ We’re still moving the ball. Different people are taking different shots. We’re taking more low-percentage shots. We’re not taking as many shots at the rim. But, I mean, our first quarter offensively was worse than our third quarter offensively when you go back and you look at it. The fact of the matter is that they had 30 points in the third.”
On body language vs. Vanderbilt
“It wasn’t as bad as it has been. I think that we are trending in the right direction here.”
On the lessons the team learned this year
“I think we’ve had a lot of individuals step up and get better and continue to grow, and now we just have to piece that all together.”
On the message to the team
“Well, I think, again, when we talked yesterday, it’s about really picking it up in March. New season, new version of yourself. A little extra. Just a little extra. Let’s give a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Level up a little bit in March.”
On the value of winning a game at the SEC Tournament
“It would be great. It would be great to see one go through. Again, I’m excited about the break that we have in between to put some practices together, but it would be great to get a win again.”
On the team growing with a normal schedule again
“It’s been a normal schedule, but we still had that chunk where it wasn’t normal. So it’s been great. It’s been great to have two practices, two-day prep to play, two-day prep to play. That has been a relief compared to where we were when we didn’t have that. It will be nice to be able to really get back to the drawing board and clean some things up. But again, everyone right now is going into SEC play, and we’ve seen these teams before. We’ve played them once. We gotta make sure that we’ve practiced again for 10 months. Like, we know what we’re doing. We’ve just gotta piece it together.”
On what she likes about having a bye in the SEC Tournament
“I think that we have players that are gonna be excited for it. I think our entire preseason has prepared us for an environment like this. We’ve played really hard games in big environments. So this should be unflappable to our freshmen.”
On approaching not knowing her opponent yet
“We’re working on us. Again, you gotta guard the three-point line. You gotta be able to guard the space floor. There are some similarities in the offense. So we’re working on those things, and we’re working on us.”
On Deniya Prawl, Kaniya Boyd, Lauren Hurst not playing much vs. Vanderbilt
“No, I think the game ended up that way, where we didn’t press as much in the second half, so we didn’t have to sub the way we normally do.”
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