ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Under head coach Kim Caldwell, Lady Vols basketball has looked to create havoc with a full-court press. For the entirety of the game, Tennessee attempts to trap, jump passes, create turnovers and run in transition for easy baskets.
However, at times this year, it’s seemed to do more harm than good. The Lady Vols have conceded easy baskets due to miscommunications, over-extensions and other miscues.
Heading into the NCAA Tournament, 10-seed Tennessee doesn’t have any plans to mix things up against 7-seed NC State. Star forward Janiah Barker said it’s important to stay committed to the system with how much it feeds what the team is doing on both ends of the floor.
“Sometimes our press is our defense and our offense. I think that it’s what fuels us, what gets us going,” Barker said. “Especially when you’re having fun, getting steals and getting layups easily, that’s what really gives us energy and boosts our confidence. I think times where if we get beat in the press, we lose our confidence. So I think making sure that we continue to stay fully committed to the press and know that that’s our bread and butter, and knowing that’s our identity of the team and fully accept it. Like fully accept our roles and be all in.”
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Caldwell hasn’t been pleased with the execution of the press in recent games, though. Tennessee has lost seven in a row and 10 of its last 12 appearances heading into March Madness.
It’s not necessarily one area of the scheme that’s not working, either. She said the team needs to stay on the same page, and there are times when the group just simply isn’t doing it. They’ll start one way, then ‘bail on it’ and lose their identity.
Getting back to what the press is supposed to look like against the Wolfpack could be critical in keeping the season alive.
“We want it to look like it should. It hasn’t looked like it should in a month, a month and a half,” Caldwell said. “I think that that’s really been a big part of our problem is we kind of lost our identity and what we want to do. We haven’t been pressing with a purpose. And we need to get back to flying around, we need to get back to guarding. And again, a big part of our problem was we weren’t guarding in a press and we weren’t guarding in a half-court, and we really weren’t doing much of anything. We didn’t have an identity.”
Tip-off between the Lady Vols and NC State is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET on ESPN. It will be a rematch, with the Wolfpack winning in Greensboro by three points to start the season back in November.
