‘A lot of quit’: What Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell said after loss to South Carolina
No. 3 South Carolina women’s basketball added yet another ranked win to its resume on Sunday.
Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks beat No. 19 Tennessee 93-50 at home in Colonial Life Arena.
With the win, South Carolina is now 24-2 (10-1 SEC) and has sole possession of first place in the conference with five games remaining in the regular season.
Tennessee dropped to 15-6 (7-2 SEC) with the loss. Here are a few highlights of what head coach Kim Caldwell had to say after the loss to the Gamecocks.
On the “embarrassing” loss
South Carolina’s 43-point win over Tennessee was the worst loss in Lady Vols’ program history.
Caldwell was brutally honest when evaluating her team’s performance after the game.
“We just had a lot of quit in us tonight and that’s been something that’s been consistent with our team is when 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,” Caldwell said. “You can’t do that anytime in the SEC, but you certainly can’t do that at a program like this.”
What do you tell your team after having a program-worst showing? Win the next one.
“Win your next game. Win your next game. It’s embarrassing. We’re embarrassed. Win your next game,” Caldwell said.
Tennessee has now lost three of its last four games, including a 30-point loss to No. 1 UConn a week ago. After the game, Caldwell essentially deflected blame to her players for the way they responded when things started going bad against South Carolina.
“That’s a question for them about why they can’t stick together,” Caldwell said.
That being said, how do you fix a team that has quit at this point in the year? It’s up to the players, Caldwell said.
“They have to fix it,” Caldwell said. “They have to decide they want to fix it.”
Tennessee struggles with South Carolina’s zone
Staley and the Gamecocks utilized a zone defense to help keep Tennessee out of rhythm on offense on Sunday.
South Carolina typically runs a man-to-man defense. Staley said she didn’t think South Carolina had ever played more zone defense in a game than in its win over Tennessee.
“They did a really good job of covering up the rim for us,” Caldwell said. “I think we were doing a decent job at the beginning when they were in man of playing inside out. We were able to attack and get to the rim. And then when we just had to stand out there and launch threes, it got ugly pretty quick, and we didn’t have the discipline to just run any offense.”
Tennessee shot 28.1% from the field as a team in the game and made just 10 of its 44 attempted 3-pointers.
“I think that it hit a point where we were just launching them,” Caldwell said. “It hit a point where it was just everyone was just going to shoot it, and that’s not offense, that’s not pretty. That’s why the score looked the way that it looked. Historically, we’ve been pretty good against the zone. That was another thing we talked about at halftime. We’ve seen zone where our zone execution up to this point has been good. It’s been efficient. I think one thing that they do is they cover up so much ground, they limit you getting those offensive rebounds against it. So if you miss your first shot, they’re going the other way.”
Tennessee was limited to 16 points in the paint and just 11 fast break points. The Lady Volunteers also turned the ball over 19 times.
This story was originally published February 8, 2026 at 6:55 PM.
