A 76-61 loss to NC State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament was the dagger to a disappointing Tennessee women’s basketball season. The Lady Vols officially wrapped up their 2025-26 campaign with eight consecutive losses and a 16-14 overall record, which is the lowest winning percentage in program history.
Kim Caldwell said this was the worst year of her professional career and that it happened because Tennessee didn’t stick to the original plan. Caldwell likes a very unique style of play that focuses on pressing, is fast, aggressive and features a hockey-style substitution system. She said the team didn’t fully stick to it and that’s how it all went south.
“You can’t play this style of play and put in a plan B, and we put in a plan B,” she said. “I think when you do that, you lose your identity. You lose your buy in. You lose your staff a little bit and there’s fault from the top, and that’s from me. I did that in the middle of the season. I know better than to do that and it was the worst year of my professional career. Our players deserve better than that from me.”
This was just the third first-round loss in program history. The Lady Vols were already on their longest losing streak since the start of the NCAA women’s basketball era in 1981 and were also the first team in at least 20 years to enter the Big Dance with seven consecutive losses. Their resume was strong enough to help them continue their streak of dancing every year since the inception of the women’s tournament, but that’s about the only thing they can celebrate right now.
Finding momentum to win a game in the NCAA Tournament was going to be tough, particularly against a young but hungry NC State roster. Things got even more challenging after Janiah Barker was listed as “out” on Friday’s availability report, which meant the team was without their leading rebounder and second leading scorer.
The first five minutes of the game were rough for Tennessee, with five turnovers and just two field goals made, as NC State was 7 of 7 from the field. The team started showing some life but never got a lead aside from its 2-0 start. Talaysia Cooper was a bright spot with 24 points, but as a whole, the Lady Vols shot just 33% from the field. They made seven 3-pointers, but they weren’t efficient since they had 36 attempts. Meanwhile, the Wolfpack shot 51% from the field with Zamareya Jones as their leading scorer with 30 points.
Tennessee became one of the most successful programs in women’s basketball history with eight national championships during the Pat Summitt Era. The Lady Vols reached the Sweet 16 last season, which was Caldwell’s first year at the helm of the program. They were hoping to build from that with the No. 2 freshman class in the nation, but this season showed some changes might be needed.
Earlier this month, senior Kaiya Wynn announced she was leaving the program early, citing senior night as her breaking point. More locker room questions arose when Cooper, the team’s star player, was on the bench for most of the loss to Alabama during the SEC Tournament.
“There was never any clear leadership on my part of, ‘Hey, this is exactly what we’re going to do, this is why we’re going to do it,'” Caldwell said when talking about the overall season. “We never got consistent rotations. That’s the first time in my (career) that we’ve never had players that consistently we know who is going to go in with which group. We just never got there.”
The biggest question now is what needs to change in order for the Lady Vols to bounce back next season. For Cooper, a junior who also has WNBA Draft eligibility, the answer is clear.
“Effort,” Cooper said during the postgame press conference. “My coach Kim says it a lot. This is an effort-based program. If you don’t want to work hard, if you don’t want to press, don’t think about coming here because this is what she does and she is not changing it.”
While this season was a step backward, Caldwell’s job appears to be safe. Earlier this month, Athletic Director Danny White said he didn’t expect “a quick fix” and is confident Caldwell can turn this into a successful program once again. The coach said she hopes to take this season as a learning experience and grow from it.
“I think that personally there have been very few times that I have hit failure and I have never hit failure to this extreme,” Caldwell said. “It’s a tough place to do it, publicly, and I didn’t like who I was at certain times. I think that God sometimes pulls you out of the storm and sometimes he sits with you through the storm… you just pray for peace in your program and for God to be there with you and there’s lessons in this and he’s building.”
