The Lady Vols will finally play at home again after a West Coast road trip, and a familiar face will be on the opposing sideline.

Semeka “Boo” Randall Lay – this site wrote about her HERE in 2023 – will bring the Winthrop Eagles to Knoxville for a game set for Sunday, Dec. 14. Tennessee, 6-2, and Winthrop, 7-4, will tip at 2 p.m. at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center. Tickets are available HERE.

Randall, who took over as head coach in 2021, has led the Eagles to the best start since 2013 when Winthrop last earned an invite to the NCAA tourney. The last win, 78-68, came last Sunday over UNCW, and the Eagles won with offensive rebounding and defense – 18 second-chance points and 18 points off turnovers – along with seven made threes.

“I’m just trying to fight like crazy to give back all the knowledge that I have in trying to get student-athletes to fight through changing the narrative of the past 10 years,” Randall Lay said a year ago in an interview with The Herald, a local newspaper in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

That knowledge includes a national championship at Tennessee in 1998 during the 39-0 record run to the program’s sixth overall and third consecutive national title under the tutelage of the late Pat Summitt. Randall was part of the famous “Meeks” with Chamique Holdsclaw and Tamika Catchings.

The Lady Vols split their road games with a loss to UCLA and a win over Stanford. Tennessee won’t be home long as the next game is in New York on Saturday, Dec. 20, against Louisville for the Shark Beauty Women’s Champions Classic at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, part of a doubleheader with Iowa playing UConn. Tennessee will tip at 11 a.m. – 30 minutes later than originally scheduled – with the second game at 1:30 p.m.

CHAMIQUE HOLDSCLAW

Chamique Holdsclaw was in town as the featured speaker for Volunteer Ministry Center’s annual Carry the Torch luncheon. Her trip to Knoxville included a trip to the hospital after injuring her knee Tuesday evening the day before the event in an elevator that malfunctioned at a downtown hotel.

She left with a large knee brace and crutches and plans to see her doctor when she returns to New York. Holdsclaw thanked the engineering crew at the hotel for the rescue, the Knoxville Fire Department firefighters for making her laugh by saying she would have a story to tell and the medical care at UT Medical Center.

Former Lady Vol Alexis Hornbuckle, who played for Tennessee five years after Holdsclaw graduated, showed up at the hospital to support her.

“That’s that Pat Summitt sisterhood,” Holdsclaw and Hornbuckle said during an Instagram video from her treatment room.

Chamique Holdsclaw glides to the basket. (Tennessee Athletics)

Holdsclaw didn’t let the incident interfere with her planned speech, and she incorporated the mishap in her story-telling to at least 800 people who packed a ballroom at the Knoxville Convention Center and gave her a standing ovation. She also shared that one firefighter immediately recognized her as a former Lady Vol basketball player that he had watched play at Tennessee.

Holdsclaw’s inspiring story outlines her mental health issues that emerged as a young adult, her parents’ struggle with addiction and the discovery later in life that her father battled schizophrenia. She was raised by her grandmother, June Holdsclaw, whose death in 2002 caused Holdsclaw’s professional and personal life to begin to unravel. After the event, she signed copies of her book, “Breaking Through: Beating the Odds Shot after Shot,” which is available HERE.

TAMIKA CATCHINGS

Tamika Catchings will receive the NCAA’s Silver Anniversary Award at the 2026 NCAA Convention, which will be held Jan. 13-16, 2026, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.

The award, which is presented 25 years after the end of a player’s college careers “honors the achievements and contributions of those who have excelled in their professional lives and continue to exemplify the values of collegiate athletics.”

The NCAA’s full story and a video about Catchings can be read HERE and watched HERE. Both are well worth the click.

“You don’t go through life to win awards,” Catchings said on the tribute video. “You live your life accordingly, and my faith is a huge part of who I am. So, winning an award like this is a testament of continuing to make a difference on the court, off the court, but it is truly an honor.”

Catchings’ final season at Tennessee came in 2000-01. Despite still rehabbing from a torn ACL suffered mid-season, Catchings was the No. 3 pick by the Indiana Fever and went on to have a storied career in the WNBA with one franchise.

She also won four Olympic gold medals and is No. 4 on the Lady Vols all-time scoring list with 2,113 points and is one of only six Lady Vols to tally at least 1,000 rebounds. As far as Lady Vols with at least 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds who played their full career at Tennessee, it’s a list of two with Chamique Holdsclaw at 3,025 points and 1,295 rebounds.

Catchings founded the Catch the Stars Foundation to empower underserved youth in Indianapolis and earned the ESPN Sports Humanitarian of the Year Award.

She also owns the Tea’s Me Café that she bought in 2017 in Indianapolis when the owner was about to close it, opened a second store and partnered with Meijer in 2024 to offer bottled teas at stores in the central Indiana area.

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Pat, that I don’t think  about the impact that she’s had on my life,” Catchings said. “We talk a lot about shining your light. There are people that when they show up, the room just brightens, and that was her. I hope when I show up the room brightens.”

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.