Women's Fastbreak On SI

Kim Caldwell Responds to ESPN Analyst's Tennessee Criticism After Loss to LSU

Tennessee Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell addressed the viral criticism of her team after losing her fifth straight game.
Grant Young|
Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell
Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell | Angelina Alcantar/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

After their 89-73 loss to the LSU Tigers on February 26, the Tennessee Volunteers women's basketball team has lost five straight games are are 2-6 in their last eight contests.

This is not the direction second-year head coach Kim Caldwell wanted her team to go at this point in the year. And Caldwell got called out by ESPN analyst Andraya Carter (who played four seasons for the Lady Vols) during an "ESPN College Gameday" segment February 22.

Among what Carter said was, "You should never say your team has a lot of quit. So that is the first mistake. Kim Caldwell is gonna figure out what to say, and when to say it, in the public eye. But she has a lot of things to figure out. I know she said this team has a lot of quit. To me, when I watch them, what they have is no belief."

ESPN analyst Andraya Carter
ESPN analyst Andraya Carter | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

She later added, "There's very little belief in this Tennessee locker room when I watch them.... They don't seem like they're having fun; they don't seem like they enjoy each other... If you're a coach, you are required to figure out a system that fits your players.

"There's no amount of NIL money that can buy buy-in. You can't purchase buy-in, you have to create it as a collective with the team and within the staff, and it's not happening right now," Carter concluded in her rant, which went viral on social media.

Kim Caldwell Addresses Andraya Carter's Tennessee Criticism

Caldwell spoke with the media after her team's loss to LSU on Thursday night and was asked whether she had any response to Carter's comments.

"I think that it's fair for the most critical people of this program to be the people who have built this program. And it's hard for me to get upset with a lot of critique, when I'm my biggest critic. And I know that things aren't going the way that they need to be going, and I’m not leaving work every day, happy, and satisfied, and patting myself on the back. No one in our program is," Caldwell said, per an X post from Emilie Rae Cochrane of WBIR Channel 10.

"We have a program full of love, we have a program full of honesty. And we know that. And I think that that's why they've been able to be so resilient through this," Caldwell added.

At least Caldwell is willing to face the music, so to speak.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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