Tennessee won its SEC opener on the road against Texas A&M to remain undefeated on the season and give coach Kim Caldwell her first SEC victory on Thursday night in the Lone Star State.

After a stellar first half, the Lady Vols got mired in a bit of quicksand in the second half but left College Station with a 91-78 victory to improve 13-0.

Caldwell’s mind was on the second half in her post-game radio and media interviews.

“I was not at all happy with our second half,” Caldwell said. “We fouled way too much. We’ve still got to adjust to the officials better. Offense was a little stagnant, and our defense was atrocious.”

The officials blew a lot of whistles with 51 total foul calls – 30 on the Lady Vols and 21 on the Aggies – in 40 minutes. That’s a difficult game for fans to watch with all the stoppages in play, and neither head coach, Caldwell or Texas A&M’s Joni Taylor, seemed to enjoy it, either.

Jewel Spear led Tennessee (13-0, 1-0) with 20 points, while Talaysia Cooper notched 16 points, Ruby Whitehorn tallied 15 points, and Zee Spearman added 14 points. Spear hit some clutch baskets, especially a three-pointer in the third quarter after the Aggies had cut the lead to nine points. Spear, who is from The Colony, Texas, got to play in her home state and put on a show with 7-11 shooting overall and 6-8 from the arc.

“She hit big shots when we needed her to, which were just huge,” Caldwell said.

Aicha Coulibaly led Texas A&M (7-6, 0-1) with 20 points, while Sahara Jones tallied 17 points, and Janae Kent added 10 points.

Whitehorn got to the paint for the Lady Vols and went 4-4 from the line in the fourth quarter to help Tennessee maintain its separation on the scoreboard.

“That was huge, especially right down the stretch, when we were a little bit dry, and we didn’t have anything going, she just went to the rim, put some buckets in, and they were tough buckets,” Caldwell said.

At the end of the first quarter, Tennessee led 22-15. By halftime, the Lady Vols led 48-26. The third quarter belonged to the Aggies, who outscored Tennessee, 27-19. But the Lady Vols got a hard-fought road win in the SEC to start 1-0 in conference play.

Tennessee is now 37-6 all-time in the first SEC game of the season, including 18-3 on the road. The Lady Vols also have won their past 11 SEC openers.

The Lady Vols will host No. 9 Oklahoma this Sunday, Jan. 5, at 3 p.m. at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center. Before the game, former Lady Vol player Nicky Anosike will sign autographs on the concourse behind Section 129 as part of an event hosted by the Lady Vol Boost Her Club.

Tennessee will land in Knoxville in the wee hours of Friday morning and be on the practice court in the afternoon. Based on Caldwell’s assessment of the second half, the players may want to get plenty of sleep.

“Practice is going to be a doozy,” Caldwell said with laughter. “We’ve got to get a lot better in a very short amount of time, if we don’t want our next game to be really ugly. I think we had a really good opportunity to make a statement, and we blew it.”

Caldwell is happy with the win but not at all satisfied with how the Lady Vols got it. While it’s her debut SEC win as Tennessee’s head coach, her expectation for her team is four quarters of solid play.

Cooper agreed with her coach’s assessment.

“Personally, my defense was kind of terrible third and fourth quarter,” Cooper said. “We’ve just got to be more locked in and more aggressive. Practice, watch a lot of film. Definitely get better on defense.”

The Lady Vols secured a road win in a tough league in a venue that hasn’t been too kind to Tennessee in recent trips. It bodes well for this team’s future that the head coach and a top scorer want to see better play on the court.

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.