When Kim Caldwell talked to the media earlier this week, she said she wanted the Lady Vols to get back to their identity of everyone contributing to the outcome.

The head coach got just that with a 99-61 win over Auburn on Thursday night that got Tennessee back in the SEC win column.

“That was a really good team effort,” Caldwell said. “I love it when everyone scores. Everyone can give us something. First half everyone (who played) scored, so it was just something for us to build upon in the second half.”

Jewel Spear led Tennessee (18-6, 5-6) with 17 points, while Ruby Whitehorn notched 15 points, Zee Spearman tallied 11 points, Kaniya Boyd posted 11 points, and Talaysia Cooper added 10 points. In total, the Lady Vols got scoring from 11 different players and went 14-28 from the arc.

DeYona Gaston led Auburn (12-13, 3-9) with 24 points, while Yuting Deng notched 13 points – the freshman just enrolled last January – and Taylen Collins added nine points.

The number of assists also popped on the stat sheet with 23. Four players, Spear, Cooper and Samara Spencer had four assists each.

“That’s something we wanted all year,” Caldwell said. “We want it to be around 22, so 23 was good. That’s one of the first things I said when I got in the locker room.”

One series in the fourth quarter, which Tennessee won 28-9, especially stood out. Tess Darby found Spencer in the corner for a three, Spencer got a steal on the other end and then found Darby at the arc for an 80-59 lead.

“I think we had great energy,” Caldwell said. “And I think they got tired.”

Auburn coach Johnnie Harris confirmed as much after the game. Tennessee’s rapid substitutions and wholesale lineup changes can wear down an opponent, and the Tigers got winded.

Tennessee’s post-game press conference can be watched HERE. Auburn’s is available HERE.

Tennessee needed the conference win as teams jockey for seeding in both the SEC and NCAA tourneys. It speaks to how tough it is to play in the SEC when the Lady Vols entered the game at 4-6 and Auburn, which fell by just two points to Oklahoma last Sunday on the road, came in at 3-8.

“Night in and night out, it is brutal,” Auburn coach Johnnie Harris said. “I told our team we can win the game, we can play close, or we can get blown out. It’s like that every night. Whoever you play, you have to be ready.”

Both the Lady Vols and the Tigers play pressure defense and want to make the opponent turn loose of the ball. Auburn lost the ball 21 times, while Tennessee had a manageable 14 miscues. It showed on the scoreboard with the Lady Vols winning points off turnovers, 22-7.

After a loss at LSU last Sunday in which the bench barely scored, Caldwell wanted her team to return to finding open teammates. Against Auburn, the Lady Vols bench contributed 34 points, including eight by Darby, 11 by Boyd and seven by Jillian Hollingshead.

“We shared the ball, and so the ball didn’t just get stuck,” Caldwell said. “We moved the ball around on offense. Everyone gave something on defense. I think when we do that, and our energy is good and we’re all connected, then it just all kind of flows.”

The Lady Vols will play the next two games at home, starting this Sunday, Feb. 16, against Ole Miss at noon, and then two on the road before finishing at home. With five games left in the regular season, each win boosts a team’s resume for postseason.

“That’s what we talked about,” Spear said. “Knowing how important each one is, taking them all seriously and then stacking wins.”

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.