The Lady Vols have started 4-0 in SEC play and didn’t get tripped up by a game that they should have won. That is important because the degree of difficulty in the conference schedule is about to escalate.

The margin for error in the SEC is slender, and every game can affect postseason seeding. Tennessee (12-3, 4-0) has beaten unranked Florida, Auburn, Mississippi State and Arkansas. The Lady Vols will be back on the court January 18 to play at Alabama, host Kentucky on Jan. 26 and travel to Ole Miss on Jan. 29.

All three of those teams are ranked, and two are on the road. Tennessee closes the month of January with a rematch against Mississippi State, an athletic team that can score and defend the paint. Anyone who peeks at the February schedule will see a trip to play at UConn in a non-conference game and matchups that include South Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, LSU and Vanderbilt, all of which are ranked.

Coaches don’t look beyond the next game – and they don’t let their players do it, either.

“We are going one game at a time,” Caldwell said. “It doesn’t matter what order you play people, when you play them, you have to show up.”

The Lady Vols avoided a misstep to start the season and are now one of just three SEC teams left who are undefeated in conference play. The other two are South Carolina and Vanderbilt. It took just four games to tag 13 other teams with at least one loss.

Tennessee’s SEC bye week has arrived already, so the Lady Vols are idle this week on Thursday. The Lady Vols have lost the board battle in the last three games, so Caldwell’s to-do list in practice required a one-word answer in her post-game remarks after Sunday’s 85-50 win over Arkansas: “Rebound.”

Tennessee’s freshman class of Mia Pauldo, Mya Pauldo, Lauren Hurst, Jaida Civil and Deniya Prawl collectively made their biggest contribution against Arkansas. The Lady Vols were down two players in Kaniya Boyd, who has missed the last two games with an ankle injury, and Talaysia Cooper, who got hit in the head with a basketball at shoot-around.

Cooper posted some good news on social media by thanking people for checking on her, said it wasn’t a major issue, and she was looking forward to the next game. Cooper is Tennessee’s leading scorer, and the team takes cues from her, especially on defense. She plays extended minutes because the Lady Vols play better when Cooper is on the court.

“I think we played hard,” Caldwell said. “We had zero time to prep for (the absence of Cooper), so they did a really good job. They played hard, they were aggressive. I was really proud of our young ones.”

Civil, a 6-0 guard, has an upside to her game that she has barely tapped into yet. She’s not a player that a coach needs to motivate. Civil said herself that sometimes she plays too fast – a coach will gladly work with that over a player who needs to be jumpstarted – and she has started to find her comfort zone. Her stat line had 12 points, six rebounds, four assists steals and an assist in 27 minutes.

Mia Pauldo has had a stellar start in SEC play, which is not common for a freshman guard.

“I think she’s just good,” said Caldwell, whose post-game presser can be watched HERE. “I just think that’s who she is. What’s impressed me the most is not her scoring, it’s her size and at her age, to not turn the ball over more. That to me on a team that has been poisoned with turnovers, for her not to really be super heavy, that has been really impressive.”

Twin sister Mya Pauldo had four rebounds and an assist, Hurst added a pair of fives in rebounds and points, one assist and one steal, and Prawl, who can get to the rim, hit both of her free throws, grabbed five boards, scored four points and had two steals.

The toughest adjustment for freshmen is college-level defense, and Caldwell’s system of full court pressure and traps puts an additional burden on newcomers. The late Pat Summitt – the players wore jerseys with her last name for Tennessee’s “We Back Pat” game – said that freshmen on defense were as lost as Easter eggs, a remark that brought a smile to Caldwell’s face when asked if the freshmen were getting better on that side of ball.

Mia Pauldo and Mya Pauldo (Kate Luffman/Tennessee Athletics)

“I like that,” said Caldwell, who then had a funny and frank response that Summitt could have appreciated. “I don’t know that I can answer that off of the past couple games that we’ve had. I think they’re not falling down as much. They understand their assignments. They’re trying to get in their gaps. They’re trying to get into help.

“They’re fouling way too much and that’s pretty much all of us. We need to play a physical opponent and see if we can stay on our feet.”

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.