Kim Caldwell's brand propels Lady Vols to the Sweet 16
The Tennessee Lady Vols are off to the Sweet Sixteen in Birmingham after an 82-67 win over Ohio State that was a picture of Kim Caldwell’s brand of basketball.
It wasn’t perfect by an means but the core values of the Caldwell system were the difference in the game.
Tennessee had 17 more fg attempts (goal each game is 20)
Tennessee forced 23 turnovers and had 37 points off those turnover
The Lady Vols out rebounded Ohio State by 5. Tennessee had 14 offensive boards, to Ohio State’s 8. That resulted in 21 second chance points. Ohio State had six.
Tennessee had 44 paint points, Ohio State had 38
The Lady Vol bench outscored the Buckeyes 38-13
It was exactly what Caldwell was hoping to see after her team’s reset following the loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament.
“You will find out quickly if we did it right,” Caldwell said. “We tried to take a couple days off to rest and to lighter days to continue to rest, then we ramped it up. It was like boot camp for a couple of days and then kind of back into the normal swing of things.”
Caldwell did see a difference in her team heading to Columbus and it showed in two games. They scored over 100 in a rout of South Florida and then controlled the fourth quarter to advance to next weekend.
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One of Caldwell’s biggest challenges to her team was to develop a better next play mentality. To play through the mistakes. Tennessee did that Sunday night although it looked dicey in the third quarter when the Buckeyes erased a 17 point deficit to take the lead. Caldwell’s team responded or Talaysia Cooper responded. Cooper made a three to retake the lead. Then she got a steal and a lay up to take a four point lead and survive the Buckeyes run.
“I has to come from them,” Caldwell said of having a next play mentality. “It has to be player led. I’m not out there. I can only just say it. I am not the one out there getting stops, so they have realize they can beat anyone. We can be down 10-12 and we just have to keep playing. Hopefully we have learned that lesson. I feel like we have learned it 8 or 10 times this year.”
Maybe the 11th time was the charm.
Cooper led the way with 19 points, a team high 8 rebounds, 5 assists, a block and 7 steals. Ruby Whitehorn added 14, Samara Spender had 10, and Zee Spearman had 17 on 8 of 10 shooting.
The win was the Lady Vols 24th of the season in Caldwell’s first year. Caldwell earned $75,000 dollars in bonus money for the trip into the tournament’s second weekend. The Lady Vols will take on the winner of Texas and Illinois Saturday afternoon in Birmingham.
