Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell faced a tough question Thursday night in Baton Rouge that she almost certainly knew was coming at some point.

It’s no secret that it’s been a tough season for the Lady Vols.

Tennessee is 16-11 after an 89-73 loss to the LSU Tigers on Thursday night. The loss was the Lady Vols’ eighth in their last 10 games.

The feeling is that Tennessee will make the NCAA Tournament, but there’s no guarantee that the Lady Vols’ tournament streak that dates back to 1982 will continue.

The Lady Vols’ tough season has led to some loud criticism from fans and media.

Former Lady Vols guard Andraya Carter was the voice of some of that criticism last weekend.

“Well, a lot of things are going on, and I agree with Coach (Dawn) Staley,” said Carter on ESPN. “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 belief in this Tennessee locker room when I watch them.”

Kim Caldwell reacts to Andraya Carter’s comments

Caldwell was asked by a reporter Thursday about Carter’s comments.

And I thought Caldwell answered the tough question as well as anyone could’ve.

“I think that it’s fair for the most critical people of this program to be the people who have built this program,” said Caldwell. “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. I’m not leaving work every day, happy and satisfied and patting myself on the back — no one in our program is. 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.”

That was a tough spot for Caldwell. She certainly has a right to defend the program she’s running, or to explain why the results don’t tell the whole story (they never do). But what made this situation tricky is that the criticism came from a former Lady Vol. The last thing Caldwell wants, or needs, is tension with former players. And if there is any, then that’s obviously a conversation that should happen behind closed doors and not via the media.

Caldwell is navigating some waters she hasn’t been in before. And hose waters won’t get any smoother with a matchup against No. 5 Vanderbilt looming on Sunday.

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