‘What they have is no belief’ — Former Lady Vol takes a blow torch to Kim Caldwell on College Gameday
The 2025-26 season is skidding out of control for Tennessee.
Things are not going well in with the Tennessee Lady Vols in recent weeks, to put it mildly. The team has lost six of their last eight games and three straight overall. They got destroyed by national championship contenders UConn (96-66) and South Carolina (93-50) on the road during that stretch. And they’re fresh off an 82-74 home loss to Texas A&M, who came into the game 3-9 in SEC play.
The losses aren’t the only point of concern. Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell has made headlines in recent weeks for the wrong reasons. After the loss to South Carolina Caldwell said the team “had a lot of quit in them” and that why the team unravels “is a question for them”. She also hit Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin with a blowby “handshake” at the horn of the Lady Vols’ 94-81 road loss to the Rebels.
The play has been bad, and the message by the leader of the program has been a rotten cherry on top recently. And one former Lady Vols player had some strong words about the program on Sunday.
ESPN college basketball analyst Andraya Carter said that the current players have no belief.
Former Lady Vol Andraya Carter says there is ‘no belief’ by the current Tennessee players
“Well, a lot of things are going on, and I agree with Coach Staley. You should never say that your team has a lot of quit. You never want to tell the fans that are watching and spending money to come watch your players that the players that they are watching are quitting on them, right? So that is the first mistake.
“Kim Caldwell is going to figure out what to say and when to say it in the public eye, but she has got a lot of things to figure out because I know she said this team has a lot of quit. To me, when I watch them, what they have is no belief. And when you’re playing on a team — and this is any team — you’ve got to believe in yourself, you’ve got to believe in the system, and you’ve got to believe in the staff.
“Because when you’re struggling with yourself, maybe you can lean on the system and your teammates, and when your team is struggling, you can turn to your staff. It doesn’t look like Tennessee, the players, they know who to turn to. Some of them might believe in themselves, but they believe in themselves on an island. It doesn’t translate to winning. It doesn’t inspire their teammates at all. There’s very little believe in this Tennessee locker room when I watch them.”
It’s incredible how this team has fallen in the last two months. The Lady Vols were in position to potentially challenge for a competitive seed in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments. Now, they have the look of a rudderless program, and the head of the program is talking like the players are a lost cause.
“We just had a lot of quit in us tonight,” Caldwell said after South Carolina game back on February 8. “And that’s been something that’s been consistent with our team is we’re not comfortable and things don’t go our way, and I have a team that’ll just quit on you. And you can’t do that in big games. You can’t do that anytime in the SEC, but you certainly can’t do that at a program like this.”
You rarely hear coaches use the Q word when talking about their players and putting them on blast publicly like that was a highly questionable move, and one that hasn’t seemed to get them to respond.
The task doesn’t get any easier from here on out, with the team finishing out the regular season with games against No. 11 Oklahoma on the road, No. 7 LSU on the road, and No. 5 Vanderbilt at home. And if the team doesn’t start buying back in, and quickly, the end of the season will arrive far quicker than it should for Caldwell and her players.
And a major question mark about Caldwell’s future in Knoxville will jump into the forefront heading into a critical offseason.
