Last season, SEC play was a grind for the Tennessee Lady Vols. Night after night, they fought to stay afloat and eventually settled at an even 8–8. Fast forward to now, and the picture could not look more different. Kim Caldwell has Tennessee sitting unbeaten at 6–0, alone at the top of the conference. And yet, she knows everything is not perfect with her team.

Ahead of the Mississippi State game, Kim Caldwell admitted the past two weeks have felt a bit strange for her team. “It’s been a little bit of an interesting two weeks,” she said. “I feel like we haven’t played very many games, because we had the bye week, and then we had that game be rescheduled. So, that’s tough for us. We haven’t really been able to string games together.”

This will be the second meeting between the Lady Vols and the Bulldogs this month. The first came at Mississippi State’s Humphrey Coliseum, where Tennessee pulled away to secure a comfortable 90–80 win. Since then, though, the Lady Vols have barely been on the floor.

Since that win, Tennessee has played just three games, against Arkansas, No. 21 Alabama, and No. 11 Kentucky, and each one came with a long break in between. They faced Arkansas three days after the Mississippi State game, waited a full week to play Alabama, then returned four days later against Kentucky.

After their Ole Miss matchup was postponed due to bad weather a few days ago, Kim Caldwell’s side faced close to a week-long wait before taking on Mississippi State. The extended break raises concerns about how sharp the Lady Vols will be.

And this isn’t the only thing the head coach is worried about!

Kim Caldwell continued, “I know I want us to look better in our press. I want our offense to continue to be more efficient. I think that when we played at their place it was one of our best offensive performances, so it’s going to be hard to replicate that because we’ve only kind of seen it once. But again, I want our pressure to be better, and I need our rebounding to be better.”

The Lady Vols shot 51 percent from the field the last time they faced Mississippi State, which tied for their second-best shooting performance of the season. Their best outing came against Winthrop, where they shot 55 percent and blew the Eagles out by 72 points.

But that level of efficiency did not show up against Kentucky. The Lady Vols shot just 34 percent from the field and were heavily outrebounded 43–35, two areas Kim Caldwell has already pointed to as priorities for improvement. And history suggests her message usually lands, because when Caldwell asks for a response, her team tends to deliver.

Lady Vols Respond to Kim Caldwell’s Demands

Kim Caldwell did not need reminding of what Kentucky was capable of. Ahead of the narrow two-point victory, she made a specific demand, knowing this matchup would be anything but comfortable. The last time these two teams met, Kentucky dominated from the opening minute, shot 52 percent from the field, and blew Tennessee out 82–58, the biggest win the Wildcats have ever had against the Lady Vols.

“I don’t like where our press is at all. I think that we’ve really been offensively focused for a long time. So, we have to fix our press,” Caldwell said. “We have to get more out of it. It’s going to be tough to do it against Kentucky, but there will be some games in our schedule where we have time and space to fix it.”

It was a very specific demand, made with one thing in mind. Kentucky was one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country. And that demand ended up being the difference. Kim Caldwell’s side applied pressure from the opening tip, forced 21 turnovers and turned them into 21 points. Just as importantly, they held Kentucky to 35 percent from beyond the arc.

The message is getting through. The Lady Vols are not just hearing their coach, they are responding on the court, and that commitment has powered them to a 6–0 SEC start. If they can repeat that level of execution against Mississippi State and keep improving in the areas Caldwell highlighted, nothing is stopping them from winning their eighth straight game and pushing to 7–0 in the SEC.