Tennessee Lady Vols end season with their first 8-game losing streak in NCAA era
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Tennessee barely extended its streak of March Madness appearance and the Lady Vols' trip to the NCAA Tournament didn't last very long. No.
7 North Carolina State ended the 10th-seeded Lady Vols’ season with a 76-61 victory in the first round Friday night. Tennessee which has played in every NCAA Tournament since its creation in 1982 had only been knocked out twice previously in the first game of the tourney – in 2009 by Ball State and in 2019 by UCLA. “Really not the season we wanted, but it doesn't really help us to get into that right now," said second-year Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell when asked about what happened this season.
“Trying to enjoy our seniors for the last little bit that we have them. ” It was an uncharacteristic season for the Lady Vols (16-14), who closed the year with the school’s first eight-game losing streak in the modern era and went winless in March. Their last victory was Feb.
12 against Missouri. “It was the worst year of my professional career,” Caldwell said. “Our players deserve better than that from me, and you learn from that going forward.
“There was never clear leadership on my part of hey, this is exactly what we're going to do. This is why we're going to do it. We never got consistent rotations.