Kim Caldwell beat the legend. She humbled the UConn brand. She planted her flag. She made the Lady Vols a player again.
First-year coach Kim Caldwell delivers Tennessee’s first win against UConn since 2007, just 17 days after giving birth to baby boy.
‘We maybe outworked them,’ Kim Caldwell says after Lady Vols beat UConn for signature win.
Incredible, truly, what Kim Caldwell achieved 17 days after giving birth to a baby boy, partway through her first season coaching a job with uncompromising expectations.
She beat the legend. She humbled UConn. She planted her flag.
And when it was finished, this 80-76 Tennessee triumph over No. 5 UConn, the crowd cheered so vigorously and “Rocky Top” blared so loudly you could hardly hear a word Caldwell said during her postgame interview with ESPN’s Holly Rowe.
“We maybe outworked them,” Caldwell said.
Outsmarted them and outplayed them, too.
The rest of what she said, I couldn’t decipher.
Her words hardly mattered. The look on her face and the elation in the stands told the story.
The Lady Vols are a player again. Finally.
Fitting, really, that Tennessee delivered that message by toppling Geno Auriemma’s proud program.
This rivalry once defined women’s sports. What better way for No. 17 Tennessee to prove it’s real, to prove its 36-year-old sideline general who coached at Marshall just 10 months ago and at Division II Glenville State just 23 months ago, is for real, than to beat the program that supplanted Pat Summitt’s Lady Vols as women’s basketball’s superpower?
Used to be, when these teams met with their unmatchable collection of All-America talent and incomparable blend of coaching legends, the result hinted at a national champion to come.
Let’s not confuse this matchup with that which came before. This felt more like a clash worthy of the Sweet 16, but don’t let that diminish this whirlwind revitalization Caldwell engineered for women’s basketball’s bluest of blue bloods, which spent too long punching below its weight and last reached an Elite Eight nine years ago.
Tennessee nearly broke through a month ago, when it missed a shot at the buzzer against LSU – a top-five opponent on the shortlist of national champion contenders – that would have sent the game to overtime.
Heartbreaking losses, though, happened often enough before Caldwell. The Lady Vols needed to finish. This time, they did.
To put the game away, Talaysia Cooper drove past her defender before dishing to Zee Spearman for a contested bucket at the rim.
An apt finish. UConn struggled to defend the Lady Vols off the bounce all night and couldn’t handle them in the paint.
The result would have been more lopsided, too, if Tennessee hadn’t missed so many good looks from 3-point range. UConn handled Tennessee’s full-court pressure well enough. The Huskies didn’t fumble this away so much as Tennessee took it from them.
And although the Lady Vols didn’t shoot to their average from distance, they made clutch buckets and controlled the paint, while UConn piled up the clanks. Star point guard Paige Bueckers kept UConn in range with an array of sweet passes, but she lost her shooting touch, and that left the Huskies with too few reliable scoring weapons.
Truth be told, I think Auriemma worried this result might be coming. When we spoke a few days ago, he questioned whether his team possessed the requisite pieces of a national championship squad, and, to be sure, the Huskies beared little resemblance to the South Carolina squad that squashed Tennessee 10 days ago. He fretted about UConn’s youthful presence on the interior.
“I think our big guys are too young,” Auriemma told me Monday, “and I think if they grow up all of a sudden, then we have a better chance.”
Those Huskies didn’t grow up on this night, and Tennessee’s budding coach seized the limelight with her collection of transfers, coupled with holdovers she retained from her underachieving predecessor.
And when the final buzzer sounded, one of those transfers, Samara Spencer, just wanted to hug somebody. She ran into Caldwell’s embrace, and surely that wouldn’t be the last hug Tennessee’s coach enjoyed after the Lady Vols’ first win against UConn since 2007.
“I want to go home and see my baby boy,” Caldwell said afterward.
Tell him about the night you bested Auriemma, the night your Lady Vols savored a win sweeter than they’d tasted in ages.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.