The Lady Vols will host rival Alabama this weekend and honor three seniors before the regular season concludes on the road at Missouri.

The first game, which will be senior day, is Saturday, April 25, at 4 p.m. at Lee Stadium with a livestream on SECN+. Sunday’s game also is set for 4 p.m. on ESPN2 with Monday’s final game at 7 p.m. Eastern on the SEC Network.

Tennessee (38-7, 12-6) will have a short-turnaround with a three-game series in Columbia, Missouri, on April 30-May 2 to complete the regular season. The SEC tourney will be held May 5-9 in Lexington, Kentucky.

The Lady Vols are coming off a midweek 2-1 win over Radford after a bye weekend in SEC play. Tennessee’s last SEC game was at Kentucky on April 13 to sweep the series. Tuesday’s win over Radford looked like a team shaking off some rust, although Sage Mardjetko struck out 10 batters in five innings, and Karlyn Pickens got the save with one strikeout and no runs allowed in the last two innings.

“We pitched really, really well,” coach Karen Weekly said. “We played some good defense but certainly not what we wanted to see offensively. It didn’t seem like a real inspired performance, but I also have to say it looked like a team that hadn’t played in a while.”

The Lady Vols got Sophia Knight back on the field after more than two weeks away with an illness. The junior went 2-for-2 against Radford and scored a run despite only being cleared to take swings the day before the game. Weekly put Knight at the top of the lineup, and she delivered despite the extended down time.

The Lady Vols have just three seniors in Pickens, catcher Jackie Kirkpatrick and infielder Camryn Sarvis. When Pickens isn’t in the circle, the Lady Vols don’t start a single senior.

Mardjetko is a junior, and pitcher Erin Nuwer is a sophomore. The three players who have played the most games at 45 are sophomore Emma Clarke, sophomore Ella Dodge and junior Gabby Leach.

While Tennessee opened the season with a scorching start, shot to No. 1 and set a new program record for best start to the season at 26-0, that youth could help explain the six losses in SEC play and one at Duke. Still, the Lady Vols have just seven defeats, and Mardjetko and Nuwer have emerged as go-to pitchers in their own right to complement Pickens.

Entering this weekend, the Lady Vols are in a tie with Texas for fifth place in the SEC as teams jockey for single or double byes. Alabama and Oklahoma are atop the SEC at 15-3, with Texas A&M at 14-4 and Florida at 16-5.

“If you’re not ready to protect your home field against Alabama, who is ranked higher, is stacked, is a really, really good team, if you’re not ready to come out and lay it all on the line for that name on the front of your jersey and the girl to your left and right, you’re not a competitor,” Weekly said. “This is why you come to Tennessee.”

BASKETBALL

The orange emojis – see last week’s column HERE – have a few more names attached to them, and the Lady Vols now have a roster of 10 on board with at least one more to come.

Incoming freshman Gabby Minus, who signed last November, stuck with her decision despite the roster being drained at the end of the season, and became assistant coach Bill Ferrara’s 11th orange this week in honor of the OG, slang for original gangster.

Eight of the emojis belong to eight transfer portal players who committed in April:

  • Harissoum Coulibaly, 5-10 guard, rising sophomore, Paris, France
  • Zhen Craft, 6-2 forward, rising sophomore, Waldorf, Maryland
  • Fatmata “Fats” Janneh, 6-2 forward, rising senior, London, England
  • Avery Mills, 5-9 guard, rising junior, Lynchburg, Virginia
  • Harper Peterson, 6-3 forward, rising redshirt sophomore, Rocklin, California
  • Kaylene Smikle, 6-0 guard, rising senior, Bay Shore, New York
  • Rylie Theuerkauf, 5-9 guard, rising senior, Tenafly, New Jersey
  • Naomi White, 5-9 guard, rising redshirt sophomore, Omaha, Nebraska

Minus also will have an incoming freshman teammate after Irene Oboavwoduo, a 5-10 guard, from Manchester, United Kingdom, committed to Tennessee in April.

Tennessee fans and media await the public reveal of the player attached to the 10th emoji, which would bring the roster to 11. While the portal has closed for entry, players don’t have a deadline to take visits and commit, although most want to get it done sooner rather than later.

The Lady Vols could use some interior help – though it has to be a post with the ability to run the floor, defend in the full court and commit to a fast-paced system – along with a point guard. And as the late Pat Summitt said, you can never have too many guards.

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.