It’s only Lady Vols basketball head coach Kim Caldwell’s second season, but after Thursday’s game against Texas A&M, she has already endured arguably her two worst losses with the school in just one month.
The Aggies shot lights out all night long, finishing the game with a season-high 11 made 3-pointers en route to an 82-74 win over the No. 21 Lady Vols (16-9, 8-5 SEC) as more questions than answers continue to arise for Caldwell’s team.
Janiah Barker was the lead scorer on the night for the Lady Vols. She finished with 29 points on 9-for-13 shooting against her former team.
“She was really efficient for us offensively,” Caldwell said. “I think she was the only player in the first half that had an offensive rebound. She was taking good shots, she was playing at pace, they were doing a good job of finding her, and we need multiple people to step up.”
Feb. 8, just 11 days prior to the Aggies (11-11, 4-9 SEC) and Lady Vols meeting, Caldwell and her team were handed the school’s largest loss in their illustrious history.
After the 43-point loss to the Gamecocks, the question from Caldwell to her players became who can step up and be the leader the team needed.
There have been no answers on that front, or really any front for the team, since that loss. Entering the game, the Aggies stood near the bottom of the SEC standings with just three wins against Florida, Alabama and Auburn — all schools the Lady Vols had also faced and defeated.
There’s been only one contest in February where the Lady Vols won convincingly, which came against Missouri with a 98-53 win. After Missouri, the team faced off against Texas. While it finished with a loss, the game came down to the final play, and there was some momentum to build off.
It’s been a tough stretch for the Lady Vols. They’ve played four games in the last eight days, which may have played a factor in the team’s energy. Nonetheless, the team has looked completely opposite from how they had at the beginning of the season.
The defense has been lackluster, and it showed most recently on Thursday against the Aggies. They opened the game shooting 80% through the first 10 minutes, and they didn’t let up much after.
“We’ll do a lot of it with film, we’ll do a lot of it with breakdown,” Caldwell said. “I think there was a point in time in the year where we were pretty solid defensively, and that was kind of what we hung our hat on, was our half-court defense, and we just need to find a way to get back to that.”
For the Lady Vols, every time the offense had an answer, it felt the defense couldn’t keep up with the tempo. Ny’Ceara Pryor led the Aggies with 22 points and 10 assists compared to just two turnovers.
The Aggies found open shots throughout the game, with everyone involved offensively. Fatmata Janneh finished behind Pryor with 17 points and also had a double-double with 12 rebounds.
It’s not too long now until the calendar flips to March, and the Lady Vols are trending in all of the wrong ways. Three losses in a row, and six losses in their last eight contests, it’s less than an ideal situation to be in with three games remaining against three ranked teams.
“Yeah, I mean, I don’t think we’re doing much of anything,” Caldwell said. “I don’t think we’re doing much of anything, and so I don’t have anything to say about that. I think that all of our errors are, at the end of the day, on me, and I think that’s understood. I think that comes understood with being in this responsibility.”
