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Lady Vols suffer critical loss heading into post-season play

On3 imageby:Brent Hubbs•03/02/25•

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Tennessee Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell. (Photo by The Knoxville News-Sentinel)
Tennessee Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell. (Photo by The Knoxville News-Sentinel)

Tennessee Lady Vol head coach Kim Caldwell’s message to her team following their loss at Kentucky was to learn from it and move on. 

Sunday on senior day, the Lady Vols looked like they had a hang over from Thursday’s loss and let it steamroll into another losing at home to Georgia 72-69. 

“It was very disappointing that we came out the way we did today,” Caldwell said. “It was incredibly disappointing that was our response.

“It feels like a regression. I don’t necessarily know that we are seeing anything different. I just think we look kind of like the old us. The us from the early part of the year.”

The loss was a huge blow to Tennessee’s hopes of hosting in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament and the lost likely puts them in the first round of the SEC Tournament in the opening game slot on Wednesday at lunch. 

“We are going to have to come up with something. We have one day of prep. We have one day of practice before we hit the road. We have to try and play ourselves out of this.”

Sunday marked another cold start as Georgia jumped out to a first quarter double digit lead marking the sixth time in the last eight games that Tennessee has trailed after the first 10 minutes. The lead ballooned to 23 in the second quarter. Tennessee got back into the game with a 23-9 third quarter and found themselves with a three point lead with 4:47 to play. But Tennessee couldn’t finish getting outscored 15-9 as Georgia made 6 of their final 8 shots from the floor.

“We started to play like us in the third. The ball was going in the hole a little better. Still not great. We had better effort. In the fourth quarter we would make a play then we wouldn’t get stops. We had some blown coverage right there at the end that really hurt us,” Caldwell offered.

Tennessee was led in scoring by Jewel Spear who had 20 points, Zee Spearman added 19 and Samara Spencer had 11. Talaysi Cooper had just 2 points playing 12 minutes in the first half before rolling her ankle and not returning. Caldwell didn’t have an update on Cooper following the game. 

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