The Tennessee Lady Vols began their 2025-26 season with a loss to NC State, and the team ended their 2025-26 season with a loss to NC State. That's not the March Madness result the program hoped for, and there are plenty of rumors that suggest players might depart via the transfer portal, but it doesn't mean everything is completely lost.
The Lady Vols went down 76-61 to NC State Friday night in the first round of the tournament. The loss was the 8th in a row suffered by Tennessee, and was one of the program's more disappointing finishes to the annual tournament.
Tennessee was forced to play without Janiah Barker, who spoke to reporters ahead of the game but fell ill before the match began. When she was asked what it means to play for the Lady Vols, Barker offered a clear answer: it means a lot. "I mean, Tennessee is the mecca of women's basketball. Of course with Pat Summitt being who she is and what she's done and how she's laid the platform for us," Barker said. "I think for me it's truly a blessing and an honor to play at this school."
Tennessee hoped the tournament would be a fresh start
Coach Kim Caldwell also told reporters she was looking forward to the team's first game providing a fresh start after a disappointing second season. "Yeah, I think any time you get into March and in March Madness it's definitely a different buzz, a different vibe around it," she said. "There's some excitement, there's some juice. You had, we have a significant chunk of time where we can practice and kind of have a fresh start there where you have time to put things together. It's exciting."
Unfortunately, the team wasn't able to carry that excitement into the entirety of the game. The Lady Vols fought throughout the 40 minutes of the match, bringing the game within one possession more than once, but the relentlessness of the Wolfpack was too much to overcome without Barker on the court.
Though the end of the team's season isn't what they hoped for, the team now has the opportunity to go home, regroup, evaluate what did and didn't work this season, and begin to plan for next year. Caldwell reflected on the team's signature full-court press, which can work in theory but hasn't looked the way it should in a few weeks.
"I think that that's really been a big part of our problem is we kind of loss our identity and what we want to do," she explained. "And we really haven't been pressing, we haven't been pressing with a purpose. And we need to get back to flying around."
Though the season will undoubtedly be picked and poured over for weeks or months to come, Caldwell's point is salient: a team without an identity is a team that's tough to rally — and perhaps rebuilding and reshaping that identity is the next starting point.