The Lady Vols departed California with a much-needed win against Stanford on a two-game West Coast swing, and the team will get a brief rest with exams now underway at Tennessee.

“We’ll have a couple days off, and then we’ll ramp it back up,” coach Kim Caldwell said after the 65-62 win at Stanford, which she called “a very, very ugly” one. “Thankfully, our December is lighter than November, and hopefully by the time SEC play comes around, you’ll see a different team.”

Tennessee doesn’t play again until Sunday, Dec. 14, when former Lady Vol Semeka Randall brings her Winthrop Eagles to Knoxville. That means Caldwell will have extra practice time between games while working around exam times. The fall semester officially ends Dec. 10 and when school is out of session, practices can run longer at the coach’s discretion as NCAA weekly time limits don’t apply.

The Lady Vols are a team in progress – November brought losses to NC State at a neutral site in North Carolina and UCLA in Los Angeles – and opening the month of December with a win at Stanford likely provided a much-needed jolt.

Zee Spearman, center, reacts during the game with Janiah Barker, Talaysia Cooper and Alyssa Latham. (Kate Luffman/Tennessee Athletics

Tennessee returned two regular starters in Zee Spearman and Talaysia Cooper with the other slots being filled by newcomers via the transfer portal and freshman class. Caldwell has said the schedule last season didn’t teach her anything about her team in November – and the team wasn’t prepared for the rigors of SEC play – so she changed it for year two.

“I do think our team is getting better,” Caldwell said in a postgame presser that can be watched HERE. “It is not necessarily translating the way I want it to, but we did a good job of sharing the ball down the stretch and didn’t force anything. We made the extra pass. We had two assists at the rim that were really pretty.

“(Talaysia Cooper) had one that was a skip across to Zee Spearman in the corner that was really nice and that one went down, and it deserved to go down because it was the right play.”

Cooper filled the highlight reel with the game-winning layup, 19 points and a career-high 10 steals against the Cardinal in Maples Pavilion. She leads the team with 34 total steals in the first eight games with the closest teammate being Janiah Barker with 13.

“She’s a phenomenal player,” said freshman point guard Mia Pauldo, who scored 14 points against Stanford. “She helps a lot of us. We don’t have to have the ball in our hand, and we can have somebody else find us and get open shots. I mean, honestly, really speechless to talk about Cooper, you’ve just got to see her play in person.”

Tennessee is now 6-2 with just three games left in December – the aforementioned matchup with Winthrop, a trip to New York to play Louisville on Dec. 20 and a home game against Southern Indiana on Dec. 22 before the holiday break. The Lady Vols will start conference play on New Year’s Day with a home game against Florida.

The media who cover Stanford saw the untraditional substitution system live Wednesday night. When Cooper, who is now in her second season with Caldwell, was asked about playing it, she smiled and said, “I love it. It gives me time to catch my breath, because we do pressure a lot.”

The slew of newcomers is getting used to the rapid substitution pattern at Tennessee. While the new players opted for the Lady Vols knowing the system is in place, adjusting to it  takes time, especially for freshmen.

“I think we’re still figuring it out,” Caldwell said. “We have different combinations. Still trying to figure out what works for us. Some nights it looks better than others. It looks a lot better when all the people are hitting shots. I think it’s something that takes about a month, maybe two months to get used to, and then once they’re used to it, it’s second nature.”

Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press and a 10th anniversary edition will be released June 16, 2026.