Last Sunday, Andraya Carter, a former Lady Vols standout and now an insightful ESPN analyst, shared her candid thoughts on Tennessee's progress in year two under Coach Kim Caldwell. Her remarks, delivered on ESPN’s College GameDay, pulled no punches.
Carter observed, “This Tennessee team, it doesn’t look like they believe in the system. I’m interested to see what’s going to budge.
Is the team going to budge, or is the system going to budge? Because if you’re a coach, you are required to figure out a system that fits your players.
There’s no amount of NIL money that can buy buy-in. You can’t purchase buy-in.
You have to create it as a collective with the team and within the staff, and it’s not happening right now.”
These comments quickly gained traction, especially after the Lady Vols suffered losses to No. 11 Oklahoma and No.
6 LSU. Following the defeat against LSU, Coach Caldwell addressed the situation with a level-headed response.
“I haven’t made a comment yet,” Caldwell stated. “I think that it’s fair for the most critical people of this program to be the people who have built this program, and it’s hard for me to get upset with a lot of critique when I’m my biggest critic.
And I know that things aren’t going the way that they need to be going. And I’m not leaving work every day, happy and satisfied and patting myself on the back.
No one in our program is. We have a program full of love, we have a program full of honesty, and we know that, and I think that that’s why they’ve been able to be so resilient through this.”
As the regular season winds down, Caldwell faces the challenge of ending a five-game losing streak. The Lady Vols will host No.
5 Vanderbilt for their final game and Senior Day, with tip-off scheduled for 2 p.m. ET on ESPN.
This matchup presents a crucial opportunity for Tennessee to regroup and find their rhythm.