MARTIN, Tenn. — Tennessee left UT Martin with a win Sunday, but Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell made clear the result masked deeper issues; namely, an inconsistent level of effort that nearly cost her team on the road.
For the third straight game, Tennessee (2-1) opened sluggishly, falling behind early as Caldwell’s effort-driven system sputtered across the first 20 minutes.
“We play an effort-based system, and if you go out there and you don’t give effort, you’re going to look silly,” Caldwell said. “That’s what happened for the first two quarters. You can’t do this if you’re not going to play hard. It’s all dedicated to playing hard, flying around, playing together, and we don’t have that right now.”
Tennessee’s lack of energy was apparent to sophomore guard Nya Robertson, too.
“In the first half, I felt like we didn’t have any energy,” Robertson said. “It was very slow. Coming into the second half, we knew we had to pick up our energy and do what we needed to do from the get-go.”
Robertson said halftime wasn’t about tactical tweaks.
It was about acknowledging the performance didn’t match the team they expect to be.
“Just knowing that what it was in the first half wasn’t us,” she said. “We needed to come out in the second half and pick it up.”
Tennessee finally did, stringing together loose-ball scrambles, multi-effort defensive possessions and second-chance plays that shifted momentum after the break.
“We played the way we needed to play in the second half,” Caldwell said. “It still wasn’t great… but there were moments.”
Even so, the coach stressed that lapses in communication, slow defensive movement and turnover issues showed the team is far from meeting its identity benchmark.
“Way too many turnovers, too much walking around on defense,” she said. “We’re still not flying around the way we need to.”
The Lady Vols also struggled early against UT Martin’s smaller, quicker lineup. UT Martin used spacing and perimeter shooting to test Tennessee’s perimeter discipline. Caldwell said that challenge magnified the consequences of lagging effort.
“When you play smaller teams, you have to be prepared for them to shoot more threes,” she said. “They were patient and disciplined… I didn’t really see them have much difficulty scoring anywhere early.”
Freshman Jaida Civil was again a focal point on offense, though Caldwell said she too must pace herself within the effort standard.
Photo By Kate Luffman/Tennessee Athletics
“She’s turning the ball over a hair too much, but they’re all mistakes going too fast,” Caldwell said. “You can work with that, but she needs to slow down.”
Despite frustrations, Caldwell said the game offered November value precisely because it exposed effort concerns her team must correct.
“Sometimes a negative is a positive,” she said. “If you blow this team out and don’t get anything from the film, something will sneak up on you down the road. We’re trying to find out who we are early so we don’t have to find it out late.”
The message from Caldwell after the game was clear: the Lady Vols’ effort must be immediate, not reactive.
“They just have to do it,” she said. “We can’t wait until halftime to decide to play hard.”
The Lady Vols return to action on Thursday against Belmont.
