The Lady Vols hosted Florida A&M this week for an exhibition game that served both as a test run for a new team and a welcome home for legendary Tennessee player Bridgette Gordon as the head coach of the Rattlers.

The game stayed close early in the first quarter – Gordon has three guards that can connect at the arc – but the Lady Vols used all 14 available players, pressure defense and a fast tempo for a 132-62 win.

“I’m very happy that my young ladies were able to see some success against the Lady Vols,” Gordon said. “That’s going to build them up, give them the confidence, because they think that I’m the Pat Head Summitt of the old days where I stay on them a lot because my practices are harder than games.”

After the exhibition game, Gordon walked to Tennessee’s side of the court to talk with the players about the Lady Vols sisterhood, provide her phone number if they wanted advice or to just talk to a former player, encouraged them to get the program back on top and advised them to block out any outside noise.

Coach Kim Caldwell, now in her third season at Tennessee, put together an entirely new roster with her staff last spring with 14 transfers in three weeks. Freshman Gabby Minus, who never wavered on her commitment in high school, made it 15. Avery Mills, a guard from Lynchburg, Virginia, was the first to commit but is out indefinitely this season after knee surgery last summer.

Zhen Craft greets Irene Oboavwoduo and Rylie Theuerkauf. (Tennessee Athletics)

Gordon won two national titles at Tennessee, including the first one for the late Pat Summitt in 1987, and an Olympic gold media in 1988  in Seoul. Her No. 30 jersey hangs in the rafters at the arena. Gordon tallied 2,462 points at Tennessee to hold the No. 2 spot in program history behind Chamique Holdsclaw.

“She is such a beautiful person and has a great light and pours into everyone she is around,” Caldwell said. “Recruiting, she is so kind to every single coach that’s around her. She’s so nice to us. She did the same to our players. A positive light that is, again, one of the most beautiful people that I have ever met.”

Gordon already had reached out to Caldwell and told her, “I’m Mama B, and if you feel like former Lady Vols were treating you any kind of way, you let me know because all we want to know is about blood, sweat and tears. We just want our Lady Vols to be the Lady Vols of old, and we’ll do anything that we have to do in order to support you in any way.”

Florida A&M is an HBCU, and Gordon also had inquired about Tennessee playing in Tallahassee, but the 2026-27 regular season schedule already was set.

“She said, ‘What about an exhibition game?’ ” Gordon said. “And I said, right on.”

Caldwell is taking her team this season to Coppin State, also an HBCU school, after the Eagles played in Knoxville last season, for a game Nov. 5 because the location in Baltimore makes it easier for the families of her new players from Maryland and the New York and New Jersey areas to see a game than travel all the way to East Tennessee.

The Lady Vols sideline reacts to a play. (Tennessee Athletics)

During the recruiting encounters Elzy and Gordon had with Caldwell, they talked about rekindling the Lady Vols’ success on a national stage.

“I want to rally the Lady Vols,” Gordon said. “If anybody can rally the Lady Vols, it is definitely me, because they’ll tell you I’m tough as nails. I told my mom, ‘If you’re on the other team, you’re going down. You can be my mom after the game. But in the heat of the moment, I going to run you over.’

“That was something Pat Summitt talked about. We’re going to respect whoever is at the helm of this historic program.”

Gordon also told the current players to look around, and they would always see former Lady Vols in their corner. She spent some one-on-one time with guard Naomi White, a junior transfer guard from Omaha, Nebraska – White is the first Lady Vol basketball player to hail from The Cornhusker State – after playing at Northern Arizona. White tallied 16 points, seven assists, six rebounds and four steals against Florida A&M. To scout Tennessee, Gordon had to look at film of games from multiple programs last season since everyone was new.

“She could be that go-to player for them – and I told her that,” Gordon said. “I had a special moment with her, and I said of everybody, she was the one that we knew was going to be tough for us to match up with. I told her I’m always just a phone call away.”

Gordon’s full post-game presser can be watched HERE. Caldwell, White and guard Jada Eads can be watched HERE.

“She was giving very encouraging words to be appreciative of each other and that we always will rep the Lady Vols, and to always rep that with pride and respect,” White said. “She was also giving us advice on how to be a great team and to make big strides.”

Naomi White (Tennessee Athletics)

Tennessee will open the regular season on Monday, Nov. 2, against Duquesne, at 6:30 p.m. in Knoxville. That will be followed by a quick trip to Baltimore to play Coppin State on Nov. 5 at 7 p.m.

The exhibition game gave the players a test run of live action, substitution patterns, full court pressure and plenty of film to study of certain situations, including shot selection and defense.

“We are going to be a high-volume three-point shooting team,” Caldwell said. “I think we settled for some, especially early. I think we took some that we could have had some layups at the rim.

“I think we were very aggressive in the press, almost too aggressive at times, There were some wide-open layups on the back end that we have to clean up about when to rotate forward, when to rotate back. This time of year, I’m much more satisfied with aggressive mistakes than passive mistakes. It’s way easier to pull them off than it is to get them to go forward and be aggressive.”

Jada Eads (Tennessee Athletics)

Caldwell brought in multiple former Lady Vol players and staffers to talk to the team over the summer. Gordon took it a step further.

“To have her come over and tell us right after the game, it means so much,” Eads said. “I’m noticing what it means to be a Lady Vol and how important it is. The Tennessee atmosphere here is important, and it’s a blessing, honestly.”

VOLLEYBALL

The Lady Vols followed up last week’s win over Kentucky by defeating a ranked Vanderbilt team last Sunday and landed at No. 6 in the latest national poll. Tennessee is 16-3 overall and 7-2 in the SEC.

Tennessee gets back on the road for a pair of matches starting tonight, Oct. 30, against a ranked Texas A&M team that swept Kentucky in Lexington. That game will start at 7:30 p.m. ET with a livestream on SECN+.

The players had some festive fun before departing for the Lone Star State.

The Lady Vols will enter the match against the Aggies, who are 13-8 overall and 6-3 in the SEC, with a seven-game winning streak.

“This league is what it is,” coach Eve Rackham Watt said in a presser that can be watched HERE. “Every weekend you have got to be prepared, and you go into somebody else’s gym, and it’s going to be a dogfight. Walking into somebody else’s place, they expect to win. They’ve got the talent to win.”

The Lady Vols will travel to Missouri for a match on Sunday, Nov. 1, at 2:30 p.m. ET that will be televised on ESPN. Missouri is 13-8 overall and 6-3 in the SEC.

“We’ve got a group of really competitive kids that really want to win, and they’re fighters, and they don’t back down in any situation,” Rackham Watt said.

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Maria M. Cornelius has worked in Knoxville media since 1988 and Lady Vols basketball since 1998. Author of “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt” and “The Legacy of Pat Summitt: Players, Colleagues, Family, and Friends Who Knew Her Best,” she covers Lady Vols sports for KnoxTNToday and 247Sports.