Lady Vols seek road win to open February at Missouri

The Tennessee Lady Vols return to action Sunday afternoon on the road at Missouri (3pm ET, SEC+) as the calendar turns to February. 

The timing of having five days off since their 70-63 loss to South Carolina Monday night has been good for Kim Caldwell’s 15-5 squad. 

“You have more time with your team that you can spend on yourself and not on your opponent. We are through a really hard part of our schedule. We still have a lot of hard left to go. We still have a tough road game coming up then we have LSU and Connecticut but I think we have made it through the top half so just making sure that we can finish our SEC schedule strong.”

To try and do that the focus this week has been on ramping back up the defensive full court press. 

“I think it’s mindset,” Caldwell said of her improving the full court pressure. “It might be a little bit of conditioning, but hey let’s just go. Just make your rotations, be ready to go and don’t be timid at the top of the press.” 

The month of January was certainly a challenge for Caldwell’s first squad. Of the eight games in January, four were against top-10 teams. The combined record of the Lady Vols January opponents is 132-42. Based on this week’s AP poll, Tennessee will play two games against teams ranked in the top 10 in a road trip to LSU and UConn. Kentucky, currently ranked 12th and Alabama, currently ranked 22nd, are the other two ranked opponents in February. Tennessee’s February opponents as they enter the month have 19 more combined losses than the Lady Vols’ January opponents. January’s opponents are 39-25 in SEC play. February’s current sit at 28-28, so the league schedule on paper is not as difficult the last month of the regular season.

The other possible aid to Caldwell’s team is simply the fact that it’s the last month of the regular season. In her head coaching career, Caldwell has never had a three game losing streak and have only lost 3 games in the month of February as a head going going 58-3 which makes you wonder if her style of play if more effective later in the season as teams battle fatigue.

“That’s a good point. I have never really thought about it from the opponent’s standpoint,” Caldwell said. “I have thought about it from us and it takes time. It takes a while to get used to playing this way and get subbed this way. Shooting quick and pressing. It does take time to get comfortable with that, but I do think maybe as teams start to taper things down and we continue to ramp things up that maybe we do get a leg up.” 

Whether or not there is any leg up remains to be seen but as the Lady Vols start February play Caldwell’s likes the outlook likes the possibility with her team if they can minimizing some of the issues that has plagued them in January. 

“I think our team still has a really high ceiling,” Caldwell said. “I think we have a really low floor. I think we have seen our floor at times. In almost every game I think we have shown our floor. But I think we have a really high ceiling and we have to continue to raise our floor.

“It’s frustrating because you want to touch it (the ceiling) and you want to be there. Again, you want to raise your floor. You want to stop having these quarters where you don’t show up. You want to stop having these bad five minute lapses in games.”

The first test in raising the floor the back half of league play starts at Missouri were the Lady Vols take on the Tigers.