What a difference a week makes for the Lady Vols basketball roster.

Tennessee added two versatile forwards this week in 6-4 Janiah Barker and 6-5 Jersey Wolfenbarger. Both players are committed and signed and will add two more high school McDonald’s All-Americans to a roster that now has seven of them.

Coach Kim Caldwell and staff answered the offseason question of how to add some size to the team and did so in typical stealth fashion. Fans swung from worried most of April about interior help to celebrating on message boards and social media as the month reached its final week.

Tennessee’s opponents aren’t quite as happy. A parody account of Caldwell perhaps said it best with an illustration of the head coach and assistant coach Gabe Lazo, who uses the toma phrase – slang for to take something – on social media and helped recruit Barker and Wolfenbarger.

The account is worth a follow, and the snark is understandable. Caldwell has been quite the target the past year for getting the Tennessee job, the style of play and her audacity to actually win.

Barker and Wolfenbarger were recruited by Tennessee out of high school and took circuitous routes to Knoxville to play their final season of college basketball.

Barker, who is from Marietta, Georgia, and played high school basketball at national powerhouse Monteverde Academy in Florida, played two seasons at Texas A&M – she was headed to Georgia but followed coach Joni Taylor west when she got the Aggies job – and then one season at UCLA, which went to the Final Four in 2025.

“Janiah is special,” Caldwell said. “She is a guard in a post’s body, and I am excited to watch her game grow during her final college season.  Her best basketball is ahead of her, and I am thankful that I have an opportunity to coach her. She will have an immediate impact, and the sky is the limit for her.”

That was Tuesday. On Thursday, Caldwell commented about Wolfenbarger, after the arrival of her paperwork, officially called an Institutional Financial Aid Agreement (IFAA).

“Jersey will provide size and speed, which is the perfect combination of what we are looking for,” Caldwell said. “She is a transition player who will help make our team faster and is one of the best rim runners out there. She will be a great fit here.”

Besides having the perfect first name for an athlete, Wolfenbarger is post-sized with guard abilities, and Tennessee’s style of play should help her thrive. If Zee Spearman is the template – she went from role player at Miami to go-to at Tennessee last season – Wolfenbarger’s game will elevate in orange.

Wolfenbarger played two seasons at Arkansas and one at LSU, so she is quite familiar with the SEC.

Last week, the Lady Vols signed Nya Robertson, a 5-7 guard from SMU who made 62 three-pointers and 111 free throws last season while averaging 18.5 points per game. The native of Fort Worth, Texas, also should fit well.

“We are excited about Nya,” Caldwell said. “She is going to be a perfect fit for us, because she can play at our speed and be a three-level scorer. She flies around on defense, pushes pace and can help us right away.”

The 2025-26 roster is now at 14 players with three transfers, six returners and five true freshmen. The roster max is 15, so Caldwell and crew can “toma” one more player if they want.

Tennessee won’t sneak up on anyone this coming season. After opening the 2024-25 season unranked, the Lady Vols will be in the top 10 next fall before tipoff.

SOFTBALL: The Lady Vols are back on the road for a three-game series at Ole Miss that starts today, Friday, April 25, at 7 p.m. with Saturday’s game at 3 p.m. and Sunday’s at 2 p.m. (All times are Eastern.) The games will be livestreamed on SECN+ and it is the final road trip of the regular season for Tennessee.

The Lady Vols swept Auburn last weekend and earned the No. 1 spot in the Softball America and USA Softball polls, while No. 3 by D1 Softball and No. 4 by NFCA. As the team’s account posted on social: just some numbers on a graphic. it’s all decided on the field.

Sage Mardjetko delivers a pitch. (Tennessee Athletics)

After the SEC sweep of the Tigers, Tennessee lost a midweek matchup, 4-3, to another Tigers team in Clemson in nine innings. The Lady Vols’ defense had some uncharacteristic slippage and two bunt attempts went airborne instead of into the dirt.

“The little things matter,” coach Karen Weekly said. “As players, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the things that get you a lot of attention like hits and strikeouts that make the highlight video. But for coaches, we do our job. We execute. We have to value the little things that lead to wins.”

Clemson is an NCAA tourney team, and the Lady Vols had a shot at winning the game. It’s not a bad loss, especially if Weekly’s message of taking care of the details takes hold.

“If we learned, that’s the big thing,” Weekly said. “You don’t want to continue to ignore getting bunts down, because quite honestly, we’ve been popping up a lot of bunts lately. Is it frustrating to lose? Absolutely. If we learn how to value those things and play cleaner, then I think that’ll help us in postseason.”

The sweep of Auburn gave Tennessee sole possession of fourth place in the SEC by one game. The Lady Vols also got two wins in the circle by pitcher Sage Mardjetko. That also bodes well going forward. Tennessee has one last regular season series at home against Texas A&M on May 1-3. The SEC tourney will be held May 6-10 in Athens, Georgia.

“It’s huge because, we can’t put all the burden on Karlyn,” Weekly said. “We don’t want Karlyn to feel that. And we also don’t want the other pitchers to feel like they’re not going to have a shot here. They’ve got a shot, and we need them.”

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.