The Lady Vols have now won four games in a row – all critical to postseason seeding – but the toughest matchup will come at Kentucky in a clash between top 15 teams.

The AP poll came out Monday, and Tennessee, which had been No. 15 and one spot below Kentucky, moved to No. 11, while the Wildcats dropped one spot to No. 15. The Lady Vols beat ranked Alabama and unranked Florida last week. Kentucky defeated unranked Missouri and lost a close game to No. 7 LSU.

Tip time on Thursday, February 27, is set for 7 p.m. at Historic Memorial Coliseum in Lexington. The game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.

“If we go to Lexington and we play like this, we lose,” Tennessee coach Caldwell said. “I think if we go to the SEC Tournament, and we play like this, we lose.”

Caldwell’s remarks came after the Lady Vols defeated Florida, 86-78, in Gainesville last Sunday after trailing at halftime. It was only the second time this season that Tennessee won after being behind at the break. The first time was against UConn.

The regular season is winding down quickly. Thursday’s game is the final road contest. Senior Day and the last regular season home game is this Sunday, March 2, against Georgia at noon.

That matchup also will be on the SEC Network, but Caldwell already has asked for fans to pack the arena to honor a special – and her first – senior class of eight players, a mix of newcomers and returnees who stayed at Tennessee after the coaching change. One of the seniors, Kaiya Wynn, who tore her Achilles last fall and missed this season, has said that she will return for a fifth year.

“We have a lot of seniors we need to send off in style,” Caldwell said.

Talaysia Cooper, Zee Spearman, Tess Darby, Jewel Spear and Samara Spencer await the start of the game at Florida. (Tennessee Athletics)

Postseason seeding for the SEC tourney, which will be held March 5-10 in Greenville, South Carolina, will be settled this week. The Lady Vols also are trying to stay in contention to host the early rounds of the NCAA tourney.

Caldwell witnessed a desultory first half in Gainesville – albeit one that lacked any rhythm as the Lady Vols were whistled for 15 fouls in just 20 minutes to five for the Gators – and Tennessee’s second half surge came with an injection of energy and whistles that started to even.

Talaysia Cooper, who played two minutes in the first half because of foul trouble, ended up leading Tennessee in scoring at 18 points.

Cooper had plenty of company on the bench in the first half. Zee Spearman, Tess Darby and Jillian Hollingshead also had two fouls. Spearman reentered before the break and was whistled for a third foul, but she kept her composure and finished with 16 points.

“I was trying to continue to bring energy, trying to keep them lifted and know that we’ve got to play through anything,” Spearman said. “We can’t play against the refs, so we’ve just got to play through it and keep going.”

The coaching staff re-presented the scouting report at halftime – something Caldwell called “much-needed” – and got the desired results. Tennessee scored 37 points in the third quarter, the most it’s tallied in one quarter in the SEC.

“Fix our defense,” Spearman said when asked what changed. “I felt like we were slacking on one-on-one defense, in our press we were not really being aggressive. We came out more aggressive in the third quarter.”

Granted at this point in this season, players on all teams are banged-up, tired and trying to get to the regular season finish line.

But roadblocks on the road have been ongoing for Tennessee, and Caldwell wants that to change in a hurry at Kentucky.

“We had talked about that at length of needing to have a good game on the road,” Caldwell said. “We haven’t had a good game on the road since  well … Arkansas is the last time we had a good road game, and we’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to mature a little bit as a team down the stretch.

“It is a big opportunity. We have to get better between now and then.”

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.