By Stephen Mason
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Like a never-ending nightmare, the Tennessee women’s basketball team ended the season in the same fashion it started: a loss to NC State. The No. 10 seed Lady Vols’ postseason hopes were crushed by the No. 7 seed Wolfpack in a rematch of the season opener.
While the first game was a nail-biter, the game that played out in Crisler Arena in the opening round of the NCAA tournament could not have been more different. Friday night’s contest was a lopsided affair that ended in a 76-61 win for NC State, and has led to many questions about the direction of the program.
Even before the game started, the hits started coming for the Lady Vols. News broke before tipoff that the team would be without senior forward Janiah Barker, who had taken up a large leadership role on the roster heading into the postseason.
“That hurt in the zone. I think she’s really good in the zone for us, really good at the high post. She can play multiple spots. She rebounds really well, so that was tough,” head coach Kim Caldwell said.
Tennessee found itself in a massive hole early, trailing the Wolfpack 19-4 halfway through the first quarter. NC State operated with lethal efficiency, opening the game shooting 8-for-8 from the floor to build a comfortable lead.
Once the lead was established, the Lady Volunteers were never able to overcome it. While they closed the gap at times thanks mostly to the heroics of Talaysia Cooper, who finished with a team-high 24 points, the Wolfpack always had answers for Tennessee’s runs.
“Just playing my game, being surrounded by great teammates that believed in me and pushed me tonight. That’s all I can hope for. But just playing with effort,” Cooper said.
Turnovers plagued the Lady Volunteers, who ended the night with 17. The team also took a high volume of 3-pointers, missing 29-of-36 attempts. Ultimately, the team was unable to stick to its game plan of high-paced, full-court press basketball and had to resort to a backup strategy.
“Plan B was when we stopped pressing. We stopped running, jumping, and we kept players on the floor for a long time,” Caldwell said. “We walk the ball before we run sets, and then we do that in games sometimes after the first two minutes, sometimes we do it in the third quarter.”
As was the case in most games this season, deviating from their identity did not produce results. In fact, it created a snowball effect as NC State piled on points late in the game.
“You can’t play this style of play and put in a Plan B, and we put in a Plan B. I think when you do that, you lose your identity,” Caldwell said. “If you’re going to put a Plan B in, don’t do it. You can’t do it. I fell into my own trap. Once you’re in it, you can’t get out of it.”
The loss not only ended any hope of a postseason run, but it also marked the eighth straight defeat for a team that failed to win a game in March for the first time in program history. With the standard being so high at the winningest program in women’s basketball, Caldwell knows this season fell short of expectations.
“It was the worst year of my professional career. Our players deserved better than that from me, and you learn from that going forward,” Caldwell said.
While the team did not want to get into the “nuts and bolts” of what went wrong so soon after the buzzer, Caldwell knows decisions will have to be made by players and coaches once they return to Knoxville.
“We’ll meet when we get back, and we’ll figure out who wants to stay and what we’re going to do,” Caldwell said.
While there may be uncertainty about the roster next season with players potentially leaving and new players joining via the transfer portal, Caldwell remains confident in her coaching staff of which many have been with Caldwell on her journey as a division one coach.
“The staff is good. It was a rough year all around,” Caldwell said. “I think all of that stems from me, and I’ve built a staff around me where a majority of them have come from me. So when they have learned from you, and I start to question myself, then it’s a little bit hard there because that’s all we know.”
Beyond roster structure, the lessons from this year will be consequential for Caldwell’s growth as a head coach. With the pressure of leading one of the most storied programs in the nation, Caldwell knows she will have to navigate her team out the storm that this season has become because time is running out to move the program in the right direction.
“I think that there have been personally very few times that I have hit failure, and I have never hit failure to this extreme,” Caldwell said. “It’s a tough place to do it, publicly, and I didn’t like who I was at certain times. I think that God sometimes pulls you out of the storm and sometimes he sits with you through the storm.”
With Caldwell taking responsibility for the failures of the last few months, the direction of the program will come down to the decisions she makes going forward. Whether it is adjusting the style of play or doubling down on her aggressive system, the urgency to get the Lady Vol program back to its winning ways remains.
After last year’s Sweet Sixteen run, year two of the Caldwell era on Rocky Top will be seen as a massive step back. However, with one of the best signing classes in the nation and the historic Lady Vol brand to attract transfers, a pathway back to success is still there. However, after tonight’s result, that pathway became much narrower, and the urgency to traverse it became much more pressing.