Lady Vols must get back to their brand as they start three game home stand

After playing four top 7 teams in their last five games, Kim Caldwell and the Lady Vols return to Food City Center Thursday night to take on Auburn (6:30pm ET, SECN+) with expectations to close out the season. 

Those four top 7 teams have a combined record of 94-8.Tennessee’s remaining regular season opponents are 89-54 overall and are 30-34 in SEC play.

So suddenly, Caldwell’s team who’s 17-6 and 4-6 in SEC play finds themselves as a favorite and in a real position to string together wins with four of the final six games at home. Caldwell is fully aware of the opportunities ahead of her team and it starts first and foremost by getting back to being themselves. 

“We’ve got to get back to your roots,” Caldwell said. “You’ve got to treat every game the same, but we still have to get better. We have to build. The rest of our schedule, we have to take care of business, and so we still have to have a sense of urgency. We talk about at length about of beating a top 10 team in the country, being a top 10 team in the country, and you can do that by beating Connecticut and then beating LSU, or you could do that by winning the remainder of the games on your schedule.”

“I just hope that they come out and play different. We have games where we look like we’re supposed to look, and we have games that look like our practice. And we have moments in other games where it looks like our practice, and then LSU looked like LSU’s practice. It didn’t look like us.

“We didn’t run in transition, we didn’t press, we didn’t go get offensive rebounds, we didn’t do anything that we were supposed to do. So just getting back to us and finding our roots consistently for 40 minutes, that is what the difference was in Connecticut. When we played Connecticut, we looked like us. It looked like our practice, not theirs.”

Getting back to your roots for Caldwell means more shots including more threes and more pace.

“I think we have done a better job with our shot selection. I actually think we can get back to shooting some more threes. I think our numbers have gone down. We’ve had games where we’ve shot 60 and we’ve had games where we shot 18. And so just making sure that we define shot selection a little bit more, but I so think we could get some more up,” Caldwell said. 

Tennessee is looking for 20 more field goal attempts a game than their opponent. Caldwell is also looking for somewhere around 30 three’s a game.

Against LSU, the Vols took 18 three’s and had 12 fewer field goal attempts than the Tigers. 

The other area where Tennessee has to get back to their roots is on the defensive end with their full court press. In the last six games they have forced 20+ turnovers one time which was 24 at Missouri. Four of the last six game they have generated no more than 13 turnovers. 

The last of turnovers hurts chances for points especially a lack of live ball turnovers. In their first five SEC games, Tennessee generated 28 points or more off turnovers four times. In their last six games, they have produced 20 points off turnovers just one time. At LSU, Caldwell’s club had 13 points off 13 LSU turnovers. 

Getting back to forcing takeaways and easy buckets in transition is key. Auburn averages 18 turnovers a game on the road and in road games opponents are averaging 19 points a game off turnovers. 

With SEC tournament seeding and NCAA first and second round home games on the line, the Lady Vols must get back to their identity on their home floor.