Lady Vols basketball is getting creative to solve its turnover problem.
No. 22 Tennessee (10-3, 2-0 SEC) committed a season-high 25 turnovers in its win at Auburn on Jan. 4. The Lady Vols are averaging 16.5 turnovers, and they have had 17 or more in six games this season.
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It’s an area they need to improve in quickly, because there aren’t many teams in the SEC that can commit 20-plus turnovers and still win. Tennessee’s next game is on the road against Mississippi State (14-2, 1-1) on Jan. 8 (7:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network+).
Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell said Jan. 7 they started using a new system in practice to track turnovers.
“Yesterday was really fun. Anytime we turned the ball over, we took that ball, and we launched it as far as we possibly could. And then they had to go get a new ball off the rack,” Caldwell said. “Once the balls on the rack were empty, we started with three balls on the rack, then we went and ran. And once they ran, they got the balls back on the rack, and we did that a lot. We did a lot of running.”
Caldwell said the team still isn’t valuing the basketball enough, but the motivation to not run made players figure things out more often at the end of practice.
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They’ve had a turnover count that led to running in practice all season, Caldwell said, but having a visual aid was “very eye-opening to them.”
“Nya (Robertson) loved throwing the basketball. She was really good at it, but that’s again, not the point,” Caldwell said. “The point is that, hey, we don’t have to throw the ball. We don’t have to get on the baseline. Let’s be proud of completing the drill. And that’s going to be something that remains in practice until we value it.”
Caldwell attributed a lot of the turnovers at Auburn to selfish plays and over-dribbling prompting a three-dribble limit for players during practice. While Tennessee has improved sharing the ball Caldwell still sees a disconnect between the team’s love for each other off the court and their chemistry on it.
In-game communication will help solve some of it. Better spacing will help, too. Caldwell said players have to want to make the change.
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“They have to be willing to take the adjustment and learn and not continue to make the same mistake,” Caldwell said. “Because when we cut the film up, we had four or five turnovers that I can clip right in a row that were identical. You would have thought it was the same possession. And just having to learn from them, too, and being coachable.”
Cora Hall is the University of Tennessee women’s athletics reporter for Knox News. Email: cora.hall@knoxnews.com; X: @corahalll; Bluesky: @corahall.bsky.social. Support strong local journalism and unlock premium perks: subscribe.knoxnews.com/offers
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: How Kim Caldwell is solving Lady Vols basketball’s turnover problem
