Ann Arbor, Michigan – No. 7 nc state finished seeded 10th Tennesseeseason in the first round of the women’s NCAA Tournament on Friday night. 76-61 Since the Lady Vols finished the year with losses in the school’s first eight games in the modern era.
For the first time since the NCAA Tournament was created in 1982, the Lady Vols were winless in March. Their last win was on 12 February against missouri.
Tennessee’s second-year coach Kim Caldwell said, “I can’t put it on roster construction. I have to put it on myself, right? I’ve always been able to recruit players… and make them run over the wall for me and make them play hard.” “I wasn’t able to do that, and the one thing I can put my finger on is that I accomplished what we wanted to do first, and then how can I blame someone else for doing it?”
Caldwell said Friday’s game didn’t go according to plan. Tennessee looked flat early and NC State took advantage – making its first eight shots and going on a 15-0 run to take a 19-4 lead, at which point Caldwell couldn’t revive her team the way she wanted. The Lady Vols got back within 48-46 at the end of the third quarter but that was as close as they could get.
Tennessee, which has played in every NCAA Tournament, had lost in the first game of the tournament only twice before – in 2009. ball state and in 2019 UCLA.
“It was the worst year of my professional career,” Caldwell said. “Our players deserve better than me and you learn from it going forward.
“There was never clear leadership from me saying, hey, this is what we’re going to do. This is why we’re going to do this. We never got a consistent rotation.”
Tennessee, who lost texas Reached the Sweet 16 a year ago, entered this year’s tournament with a 16-13 overall record and an 8-8 mark in SEC play.
Struggling outside the paint, the Lady Vols were 7 of 36 on 3-pointers Friday night. In the second quarter, when NC State switched to a zone defense, Tennessee’s offense averaged 0.5 points per possession and missed all 13 of its 3-point attempts.
Tennessee shot 33% from the field overall and attempted six free throws, the program’s second-fewest total in the NCAA Tournament.
The loss was Tennessee’s seventh by 15 points or more this season – its most in 40 years.
“There have been very few times that I have faced failure, and I have never faced failure to this extent,” said Caldwell, who previously coached at Marshall and led his alma mater, Glenville State, to the 2022 Division II national title. “It’s a hard place to do that in public, and I haven’t liked who I was in a while.”
The players, some of whom had tears in their eyes, expressed disappointment at the end of the year.
“Obviously losing any game sucks, but our season is over in this game and it sucks even more,” the Tennessee junior forward said. Alyssa Latham. “We tried our best today to move our season forward but it didn’t go the way we wanted.”
tennessee senior Taleshia Cooper“I feel like we worked hard in this game. You win some, you lose some. It happens,” said the 24-point scorer.
Cooper, who will be eligible for the 2026 WNBA Draft, said she is not thinking about her future at this time.
“I’m just thinking about the game we just played and spending time with my teammates,” she said.
Pat Summitt, who won eight NCAA championships with the Lady Vols, had 23 seasons with six or fewer losses. This year’s team tied the most losses since the 2015–16 season and recorded the fewest wins for an at-large team since 2018, leading to Tennessee’s worst seeding since 2019.
The Wolfpack advanced for the eighth time in their last nine NCAA Tournaments and will play the second seed michigan Sunday in the second round on the Wolverines’ home court.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
