The Lady Vols finally returned from the West Coast and coasted to a win against Winthrop – welcoming former Lady Vol Semeka Randall Lay back to campus as well – and will get right back on the road for a trip to New York.

Randall Lay, part of the Three Meeks written last week HERE, made her second consecutive trip to Knoxville to play her alma mater as head coach of the Eagles. The 2025 game wasn’t initially planned, but Randall Lay brought her team from Rock Hill, South Carolina, to Tennessee.

“It’s always good to come back here, especially when you’re in this transfer portal,” Randall Lay said. “The majority of my team is new, so it’s great to take them to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and then obviously play in this game and show them where this is my home away from home.”

Randall Lay has a roster full of portal transfers as player movement is the norm in college sports now. Madison Ruff, a sophomore guard from Sparta, Georgia, is one of those players after playing her freshman season at Mount Saint Mary’s.

Mia Pauldo launches a free throw alone on the line to shoot for Tennessee after Winthrop Coach Semeka Randall Lay was assessed a technical foul for emphatically asking for a foul call. (Tennessee Athletics)

“It was a great experience,” Ruff said. “Some of us not being from Tennessee, Coach was showing us around and what all she’s seen or been through and telling us background stories of all the women in the Hall of Fame.”

“I have to hold them accountable,” Randall Lay said. “They don’t know half the people that have contributed to this game. We might have to start doing quizzes in July. We already do quizzes on plays.”

Ruff already knew about her head coach’s success at Tennessee, including the three Meeks and the undefeated 39-0 season and 1998 national championship when Randall was freshman.

“Yes, I’m very familiar,” Ruff said. “On my recruitment process, my mom, that’s all she talked about. She’s from Tennessee, Tennessee this, Tennessee that. It’s a great environment. I love the experience as a whole.”

Ruff played at Baldwin High School in Milledgeville, as did the late Tasha Butts, who died in 2023 from breast cancer in a story that can be read on this site HERE.

“She’s very familiar with Lady Vols basketball, and her mom knows it, so I’m quite sure she shared a lot of stories about the Tennessee program,” Randall said.

The current Lady Vols team will play Saturday, Dec. 20, against Louisville at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Tipoff is set for 11 a.m. with a national television broadcast on FOX.

Tennessee defeated an overmatched Winthrop team, 112-40, on Sunday afternoon. As Randall Lay said: “Tennessee was going to do what Tennessee was going to do to us.” Randall Lay is familiar with a defensive pressing and high-octane style of play. She lived a version of it as a freshman. The Lady Vols also hit the brakes in the fourth quarter with the players who previously had logged the fewest minutes staying on the court for most of the final 10 minutes.

Caldwell noted the size advantage Tennessee had, so she wasn’t going to read too much into the outcome, but she also saw a team that has responded better since a 22-point loss at UCLA. Tennessee also had a full week of practice after returning home.

“We needed the week,” Caldwell said. “I think that they would have rather played, but I think we got better from it, and you can slowly see us starting to get better. We needed to string some days together, work on some different things.

“I think it paired really well with the fact that we had time in our schedule to work on some things and put it together. And now school is not in session, too, to really take a big step because we have time.”

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.