Tennessee women’s basketball improved to 3-0 with an 83-40 victory over New Haven, but head coach Kim Caldwell wasn’t entirely satisfied with the Lady Vols’ performance.
Despite the 43-point victory, Tennessee struggled to establish an offensive rhythm early, with inconsistent finishing, spacing issues and missed opportunities at the free-throw line contributing to another slow start.
Caldwell intentionally experimented with different lineups and allowed her players to call their own sets as the team continues to develop chemistry ahead of a more challenging schedule.
Freshman Gabby Minus provided a spark defensively, while veteran forward Aaliyah Moore continued to establish herself as a leader for a Tennessee team still searching for consistency.
Following the victory, Caldwell, Minus and Moore discussed the team’s offensive struggles, defensive intensity, leadership and the adjustments needed before Tennessee hosts Middle Tennessee.
Kim Caldwell on Tennessee’s slow start and experimenting with rotations
“We intentionally had them call their own sets and didn’t call a lot of plays for them to try to work their way through it. And I think that was part of the result of the slower start. But those are things we need. Those are things you need because we are going to get in high-pressure situations very quickly where five players on the floor have to figure it out together. And so we’ve talked in the locker room a lot about what our response to this is going to be, and again, there’s only so many things we can replicate in practice. And now our game experience is going to be very important for us to learn from.”
Caldwell on whether she discovered effective lineup combinations
“I necessarily don’t think we found something we liked tonight. I think about halfway through the second quarter, maybe we leaned it back to the more similar groups we had been playing with before. And we’ve been throwing them out in practice too because we really needed those rotations nailed pretty quickly, and it wasn’t really quite working out for us the way we wanted. But again, that was a little bit intentional to find them, to see who they would be on game day and have them play their way through that. And we had been mixing them up in practice, mid-practice, multiple times in practice.”
Caldwell on integrating Nya Robertson into rotation
“A little bit of both. Again, as a team, holistically, we’re still trying to get our flow and find our 10 and find what point guard belongs with what post and what shooter belongs where and who plays well with who. And that has been something we thought we had, and then once we got into games, it didn’t look the way we necessarily thought that it would. And so, still trying to get our 10 narrowed down and find people that separate themselves.”
On what Nya brings to Tennessee:
“She is another good ball handler for us. She can push pace. She is a pretty good defender. She can keep the ball in front of her. She plays really hard all the time.”
Caldwell on Gabby Minus’ defensive impact
“It says she wants to get the ball back. She wants to do the right thing. She listens. She tries hard. A lot of what Gabby does is effort, and it’s just knowing where to be and when to be there. Athleticism. She’s long, but she wants it, and she works really hard for it. And she is a product of, again, I’ve said it over and over, and I always say it, she’s consistent in what she does every single day, and that’s why she’s been consistent on the floor for us in all of our games.”
Gabby Minus on finding her rhythm early in her freshman season
“I definitely just learned, like, just let the game come together. Like Coach Kim said, just playing hard, just a little effort, just doing the little things. I think today we needed somebody just to get things going. I just said let me just be that person on the defensive end to get things going for my team, and that was the biggest thing for today.”
Caldwell on the importance of Tennessee’s veteran leadership
“Yeah, it’s really important. It’s important to have people that understand when I say things that I mean it, and Aaliyah is a really good example of somebody who has been in the SEC at a high level and has been at the top of the top.
“She knows what is coming for us, where we have a lot of players that don’t. And until you have played in the SEC and gone through that gauntlet, you maybe think that, OK, the fact that we allowed 15 offensive rebounds today is not a big deal.
“She understands that it is, that that 15 is going to turn to 40, and for players like that to be able to echo what I am saying with a sense of urgency, it’s invaluable. And I think anytime you have seniors, it means more for them. It’s the last go-round. They want to get it right. They want to have fun, but they want to get it right. And when you have seniors that your team loves and your players love, they want to get it right for them. And I think that our older kids do a really good job of that.”
Aaliyah Moore on leading Tennessee’s younger players
“I think just kind of being that voice, like Coach Kim said, I do know what it takes and what’s coming for us and how hard it’s going to be every night. So I think just trying to kind of repeat what Coach Kim says, what the coaches say, but also make sure I’m leading by example because I don’t want to go out there and tell my teammates to do something and then I’m giving up a point, I’m not rebounding, I’m not doing my job. So I just try to do my job to the best of my ability every night, and then kind of help my teammates throughout the game, communicating. I feel like, as Kim would say, I’m one of the loudest communicators on the team, so I just try to make sure that I’m doing that every night. But I think just leading by example.”
Caldwell on Tennessee’s struggles finishing at the rim
“A lot of it is space-oriented. We have too many people in the paint, and I think our stress response as a team is to cut, and I have a team that is trying to do the right thing. The mistakes that we make, there was not one second today that they didn’t play hard, and the ball wasn’t going in. It was sloppy. It was ugly. But the mistakes they made were aggressive mistakes, and I’m OK with that.
“But we’re at a point now where we have to have discipline. So the same thing with our finishing. Some of them we just missed. Some of them we have too many people in the paint to be able to get a clean look. And we have too many people in the paint because sometimes we cut to try to fix our offense, even though it’s not part of our offense.
“Sometimes we have too many people in the paint because they’re trying to go offensive rebound, and they thought the player with the ball was going to shoot it, and they didn’t. Then they decided to put it on the floor. Sometimes we have bad space just because we’re not organized and it’s new. And so finding our spacing to where we can get straight-line drives to the rim is going to be really important. And tonight we just smoked some easy ones. Some uncharacteristic things of this team tonight is our foul shooting wasn’t very good tonight, and that’s not who they’ve been.”
Minus and Moore on responding when the offense struggles
Gabby Minus:
“I just think one of the biggest things that we can talk about lately is just staying true to ourselves. Just knowing when things are not going our way, we have to adjust and just kind of keep a positive mindset because not everything’s gonna come out.”
Aaliyah Moore:
“Yeah, I think Gabby hit it on the nail. I think it’s something that we need to address now. Coach, she does a good job of bringing it to our attention, especially the close camp talk that we had today.
“But I think it’s just something that we’ve got to get better at. Like our starts to the game are not great, and Kim mentioned that our starts to practice aren’t great. So just making sure they’re really good in practice, so it translates over to the game.”
Caldwell on Aaliyah Moore’s versatility and physicality
“Yeah, it is really great for our offense to be able to have a player like her that can score outside and in. She is a very capable 3-point shooter. So we can play her out, we can play her in. She can help start our offense by setting a ball screen or a rough cut. She’s very good on the offensive rebounds, and so she’s a weapon that we use a lot of different ways, and it’s been really fun.”
Caldwell on preparing for Middle Tennessee with a quick turnaround
“Yeah, we talked about that very quickly as coaches because we have a lot from this game I want to get better at and a lot we have to be prepared for our next game. Middle is a very, very big team, so we have to do both. We want to be as efficient as we can in practice. We’ll work on some finishing to start, making sure we have a great start. So hopefully we can have a better start when we play Middle and work on everything schematically under duress that we possibly can for them.”
