Lady Vols basketball point guard Mia Pauldo has made a strong first impression to start her first season of SEC play.
The freshman’s performance against Alabama was one of her most impressive outings so far. Pauldo only played a combined five minutes in the second and third quarters with foul trouble, but she was critical down the stretch of No. 17 Tennessee’s first ranked win.
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It was a two-point game with 8:23 left in the fourth quarter, and Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell sent Pauldo back into the game with four fouls. Pauldo didn’t leave the court again, scoring 10 of her 13 points to lead Tennessee to a 70-59 win over then-No. 21 Alabama. She hit two massive 3-pointers and went 4-for-4 on free throws.
Caldwell said Jan. 21 that she’s proud of Pauldo, and it was big for her to go in and play nearly the entire fourth quarter with four fouls.
“She went in there and she made us a little bit nervous, ’cause she baited into an offensive foul. And we’re like, ‘What are you doing?’ And so, you’ll still have some freshman moments, but as a coach, I’ll take that,” Caldwell said. “I’ll take somebody who’s willing to make big plays. I’ll trust somebody who has that fire in them, as opposed to trying to pull it out and pull it out.
“We don’t ever have to pull it out to get it with her. She’s never scared of a moment. She’s going to make the right play.”
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Caldwell said the team sharing the ball better has allowed Pauldo to get more shots, because she used to make the first pass and never get the ball back. But Caldwell still wants Pauldo to shoot more and get more looks within the offense.
“She turns a lot down really to create for her team,” Caldwell said. “She doesn’t take bad ones and we want her to take more. We need her to take more. She really spaces our offense out.”
Pauldo is averaging 15 points, 2.6 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 1.0 steal in SEC play, and she’s certainly a contender for SEC Freshman of the Year. Her scoring average ranks 12th in the conference and second among freshman, trailing only Oklahoma freshman Aaliyah Chavez’s 18.4 points per SEC game.
But Pauldo has been much more efficient, shooting 42.9% on 9.8 field goal attempts per game and 34.5% on 3-pointers. Chavez is shooting 32.6% from the field on 19 attempts per game, and she’s shooting 31.3% on 3-pointers. Pauldo also has a 2.17 assist-to-turnover ratio, and Chavez’s is just .84.
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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: Why Kim Caldwell trusts Lady Vols basketball freshman Mia Pauldo’s ‘fire’
