They’re cooking something in Tennessee.
The “they” in that sentence is actually two theys – two basketball teams, that is. The Vanderbilt Commodores and the Tennessee Lady Vols are both experiencing season firsts, though, at times, at very opposite ends of the spectrum. As for what they’re cooking? The answer is all things unpredictable, unusual, and unexpected.
Vanderbilt finds its place among the elite
There’s no denying Vanderbilt has been having the kind of season that coaches and players often dream of. Last Tuesday, Mikayla Blakes was named SEC Player of the Year, Aubrey Galvan won Freshman of the Year, and Shea Ralph picked up Coach of the Year. The team treated that day like any other, Ralph told reporters the next day, but she couldn’t hide all of her excitement.
Ralph, who was raised to play for the Lady Vols under Pat Summitt but pulled a 180 and went up north to spend her collegiate career with Geno Auriemma and the UConn Huskies instead, knows a thing or two about what it means when one program stacks up awards.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I know that usually, the teams that win are the ones that get this award,” Ralph said. “So, I know it’s going to sound corny, but it’s a team effort. It’s a team award. They all are. Everybody on our team has value and brings value. We don’t always – they don’t always get honored for it like we are today, the three of us, but they are part of this.”
But during March Madness, what’s more important than awards “are the things that you can’t vote on,” Ralph added. “And those are championships.”
The Commodores had a record-setting regular season. They came into the final week with 13 SEC wins – the most in the league. Though much of the NCAA hasn’t quite woken up to what’s happening in Nashville, Ralph insists that it’s time. Galvan and Blakes are great players and “even better humans,” she said, but so is everyone at Vanderbilt.
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The Lady Vols have a proud legacy
The University of Tennessee is approximately three hours east of Nashville, and the women’s basketball team hardly needs an introduction.
The Lady Vols were led by Summitt, who began her coaching career while earning a graduate degree, for 38 seasons. The years after her retirement were defined by the Holly Warlick and Kellie Harper eras – both talented coaches – but neither fully recreated the magic Summitt brought to the floor.
The program hired Kim Caldwell, with one year of Division I experience under her belt, for the 2024-25 season. Caldwell, who introduced a hockey-style, five-in, five-out, substitution system, which has at times stirred controversy, had a successful first season: The team started 13-0 and ended up in the Sweet Sixteen.
But year two has been a challenge for the Lady Vols. That’s to be expected to a degree – recruitment visions can take time, and Caldwell and her assistant coaches are only beginning to work with the roster they set out to build. It did’t help that they lost Ruby Whitehorn ahead of the season’s beginning.
And of course, naturally, Caldwell has been forced to navigate the program’s perpetually sky-high expectations – often seen as a blessing and a curse.
Tennessee came into the SEC Tournament this year 16-12 overall and 8-8 in conference play. That wasn’t where they wanted to be, but it also wasn’t nearly as dismal a record as some have said. On March 4, the school’s athletic director, Danny White, affirmed his confidence in Caldwell’s coaching and her vision.
He also acknowledged what many basketball fans know: It’s not easy to live up to a legacy, and the Lady Vols have a remarkably storied history. Sometimes, patience is mandatory.
White’s office did not respond to The IX Sports’ request for comment.
No one seems more aware of the pressure than Caldwell, who White also described as intensely competitive. While speaking to reporters on March 1, she pinpointed the moment when so many of the team’s games have appeared to fall apart: the third quarter. Caldwell acknowledged that the team’s third-quarter woes almost appear to be cyclical.
“Yeah, it’s something we’ve been addressing. We’ve been addressing it,” she admitted. “We’ve tried to change up who goes back out on the court to start the third quarter. We’ve addressed it, I don’t know, for a couple games now, maybe longer.
“And so [we] just have to maybe trick (the players) into thinking that we’re doing something different. Other than that, we go in, and we talk about a game plan. … They talk about it first. They’ll write it on the board. We’ll talk about what we have to add as coaches. We’ll repeat it as a team, and then we come back out. And it always looks a little different than we wanted to.”
A potential solution, she added, could be to watch the third quarter in real time. “You just got to continue to try,” Caldwell said.
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SEC Tournament woes deal punishing blows
Caldwell’s theory could have been tested Thursday night in Greenville when the Lady Vols faced Alabama in the second round of the SEC Tournament, but the game quickly spiraled well outside Tennessee’s control. Except for a momentary 12-12 tie in the first quarter, the Lady Vols trailed the Crimson Tide the entire match.
Caldwell took immediate responsibility following the game. “I think we got outworked, outplayed, outcoached from the very start,” she told reporters.
The Lady Vols played an especially challenging February, she also noted, and that’s partly responsible for what was the team’s seven-straight loss. But it wasn’t, and isn’t, the sole reason. Turnovers were a huge problem for Tennessee; the team continuously kept “trying to dribble through the zone, dribble through gaps that weren’t there,” Caldwell added.
Tennessee will spend the next week regrouping before the NCAA Tournament and will attempt to “get back to who we want to be, and move forward from there.”
As for Vanderbilt, despite its success in the regular season, its SEC Tournament run came to a similarly disappointing finish.
The Commodores played their first match of the tournament in the quarterfinals on Friday. They met Mississippi, one of three teams that managed to defeat them during the regular season.
In Greenville, Yolett McPhee-McCuin’s team led the Commodores 49-17 at the half, partially the result of her players remembering the scouting report from when the teams met in Birmingham on January 30.
After her team’s dominant win over Auburn on Thursday, McPhee-McCuin said she asked her team what they remembered from that January match.
“They were able to tell me the scout, which was really good,” she said. “Tonight I asked them to just watch the game so that they can be refreshed, but as far as we’re concerned, we want to dictate and disrupt.”
Dictate and disrupt was certainly what Mississippi managed to do. It found every way to stop the typically robust pairing of Mikayla Blakes and Aubrey Galvan in its tracks.
Vanderbilt struggled to catch passes, get to the glass and do much of anything against Mississippi’s relentless defensive onslaught. In the end, the Commodores lost the game 74-60 – and saw their coach ejected from the match at the top of the fourth quarter.
Ralph explained after the game that though she felt her actions were “warranted,” what was most important to her was fighting for what she believed was fair.
“As coaches, we just want consistency from our team, from our staff, from everybody that’s involved in the game of basketball,” she said. “Just consistency.”
The ejection seemed to inspire her players, who valiantly attempted to come back from a steep deficit before the game’s end.
“We know who we are. We know when we give that type of fight, no one can beat us,” Vanderbilt’s Sacha Washington said after the game. “We know we have to put the fight together for four quarters and be consistent.”
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Where Tennessee and Vanderbilt’s fates intersect
In some ways, Ralph’s own run at Vanderbilt may provide insight into what Caldwell is up against – and what she can accomplish. Ralph’s first two seasons saw more losses than wins – 16-19 in the 2021-22 season and 12-19 in 2022-23 – before the ship began to right itself.
Although the two coaches have different approaches to negative questions and comments about how their seasons are going – Ralph is measured, while Caldwell is blunt – it’s fair to say perhaps Lady Vols fans haven’t quite given Caldwell enough time to show what she can do, and maybe Ralph got lucky by not having quite as many eyes on her while she figured it out.
For now, both programs are in vastly different, but also incredibly similar, spots. Now is the time for reflection, regrouping, and perhaps, a little reinvention before both teams get their shot to prove what they’ve learned later this month.
