Lady Vols basketball finished the regular season tied for a program record in most consecutive losses with six after the loss to Vanderbilt on Sunday.
Now the 2026 SEC bracket is set for all 16 teams to battle in Greenville, South Carolina, beginning with round one on Wednesday.
Despite a rather ugly conference finish with only two conference wins since Feb. 1, four teams finished at the six seed after a four-way tie between Georgia, Ole Miss, the Lady Vols and Alabama, with an 8-8 conference record.
“We need a win,” Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell said. “You need a win. You need a win in the SEC tournament, get some momentum, and take it game by game there.”
The last conference win came against Missouri at home in a dominant 98-53 win. After the win, a close loss to Texas had Caldwell and the rest of the team convinced they were still close to finding a solution.
Instead, they responded with a rough road loss to Ole Miss, a home loss to Texas A&M, ranked road losses to Oklahoma and LSU, and the final loss to Vanderbilt.
“It’s harder this year than it was last year,” Caldwell said. “And I think that that is something that we need to do a better job of explaining, that you have to show up every single night. Because even if you don’t perform well against the ranked opponents, and we had two that we should have gotten, then you’re significantly better going into the SEC tournament, right? And so we let two that on paper shouldn’t get away from us, they got away from us.”
The two games that got away from them more likely than not include Texas A&M, as well as a rough home loss to Mississippi State a few weeks prior.
Nonetheless, the Lady Vols start a day later in the tournament than they did last year. During last season’s tournament, the Lady Vols were geared up to play in the first round against none other than the No. 16 Aggies.
The Lady Vols were the No. 9 seed, but as Caldwell mentioned, the league is as tough as ever, and the Lady Vols are not running on many positives. They’ll either line up for a meeting against the No. 14 seed Mizzou or No. 11 Alabama on Thursday for the 8:30 pm ET slotted game to end the night slate.
The last meeting against Alabama for the Lady Vols resulted in a 70-59 home win. So both teams have been marked as wins in the scorebook, but is that the same Lady Vols team that will be taking the court in Greenville?
“I think, again, you focus on your next game. It’s go time,” Caldwell said. “March is when you want to be playing your best basketball. Regardless of what our record has been, I do think that we are showing some improvement in some areas. We need to continue to put it together. We need to continue to take those lapses away. Work on that. I think I have a team full of individuals that’ll be ready to go in March.”
