After giving birth to her son, Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell met with the media.
Here's what the Tennessee coach said about her new child and South Carolina.
TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM
On how she's feeling
Good.
On if she's glad to be back
Yes. It's nice to be back.
On what the highlight was in her first week with her son
How cute and little he is. You could just stare and look at him all day.
On watching the game vs. Texas on TV
That's not great. It was very, it was uncomfortable, but you're just, you get to see it from a different perspective. I was proud of our team, but it was not my favorite thing I've ever done as a coach is having to sit home and and watch it on tv.
On if she took different notes watching on TV
It does give you a little bit of a different view, but not really because you always kind of go back and watch the broadcast anyway. So, you'll watch it clipped up and then you'll watch it kind of in live stream. So, it just was more of a helpless feeling than anything else.
On if she texted acting head coach Jenna Burdette during the game
Oh no, I was letting her do her thing. I was just far away. I'm gonna let them handle it.
On Burdette's coaching
She did great. She stepped up and we had tried to talk about it for months and months. We knew that that trip was gonna be hard. I was either gonna be very pregnant and very well close to having a baby or have a baby and so she did a great job of taking control and she had the two days of practice before that and then she had the team there and the team looks up to her and respects her. I think the team responded really well too, of just making sure that they didn't really have a drop off.
On if she is coaching vs. South Carolina
That's the plan.
On when she gave birth
I was back in practice on Friday and we had our son on Monday.
On how it was to be back on Friday
It was good. Yeah, it was good. It was hard to leave your little one, but then you missed your team and you kind of feel like you were just not there for them. And so to be back and to be around them and to be back in your routines.
On if the team is chomping on the bit to see her son
They are. They're gonna have to wait. We have a lot, we have a lot of germs.
On her naming her son Conor Scott
Oh well the unusual spelling was my husband's choice. I lost the name drawing twice. So he picked that, the spelling of that name I wanted, I think I wanted C-O-N-N-E-R and then Scott after my dad was something, but that's just a name we've always kinda had picked out for a little boy.
On making the middle name after her father
It was huge and if we have a little girl, we'll name her Scotty. So we had that picked out, too. And just to be able to pass a little bit of his grandpa and I think it's good.
On what it was like telling her dad
My dad passed away.
On telling her mom
She loved it. Yeah, she loved it. And my sister's son also has his middle name, too. So we say anyone in the family that has Scott as a middle name is a little bit ornery just like my dad was.
On advice from her sister
She's gonna come help soon. So my mom is here, my husband is doing a great job and so my sister is gonna come I think next week to help.
On balancing work and motherhood
So far so good. It always helps when you have a staff that you can trust. You have a team that you can trust and you have support at home. My husband again is doing a great job. My mom is here, bless her heart, and it would be a completely different story if that wasn't the case.
On what the baby weighed
Thankfully he was little, which I was fine. He can grow on the outside. He was six-ten, which was my dad's height. So that was pretty special to us.
On what Rick Barnes told her
(His daughter being born in season) was the first thing he told me. When we announced, I went over to their office and he kind of told me a little bit of his story and made me feel a little bit better. And so that was big.
On South Carolina's defense
We have to take good shots. We gotta try to go and transition, but we have to take good shots, work the ball around a little bit better, try to make them guard for longer. But they're very good on both sides of the ball.
On South Carolina's bench
I mean they're incredibly deep and so we talked about it yesterday that every single person that's on the floor, we go deep too, but we need everyone to show up and everyone to be able to guard.
On playing a team with 10 McDonald All-Americans
I don't even know10 McDonald's All-Americans. And so when you're prepping you just, it's just a different level and they're all so talented. And so just making sure that everyone is prepared and you can't fall asleep on defense. And even if you do, even if you are locked in, they're probably still gonna hit tough shots and you just gotta be ready to weather that storm.
On what she saw from her team on Friday
I think they're handling it okay. I think that we just have to see it translate and so we can't continue to have the same conversations about rebounds and we can't continue to have the same conversation about fouls and so we have to start to make adjustments.
On working on their press
We're just continuing to work on pressure and getting turns. I think our press looked great for the first minute against Texas. I think we forced three turnovers and maybe the first minute and a half and then we only got one more steal for the remainder of the game. So just back to consistency of let's just continue to do this for longer. South Carolina is gonna be really hard to see any improvement on because playing and transition only fuels them. It just makes them better.
On her team's health
We're sick. I had the flu the day that I gave birth. We have some of them that are sick and so we are just trying to patch some holes and get some fluids in us and hopefully everyone will be ready to go tomorrow.
On the team progressing in transition offense
I think they're kind of seeing a little bit of success, especially our rim runners. I don't remember if it was before or after, it must have been before the Vanderbilt game, we showed some clips of this is what you look like, this is what it's supposed to look like in transition as far as just running and pushing. And so I think we've had some people, especially our bigs, have kind of taken that to heart again. I think that they could do it more, just being more consistent with it.
On the clips she showed
It was from past teams. When we taught it, we showed past teams and we just pulled the same film.
On if it's settled in that she's a mother
No. I haven't, you hold your son and it kind of hits you, but it's just kind of interesting. It's a double life right now. You're here, you're coach; you're home, you're mom, and I think it'll be that way for a while.
On South Carolina's MiLaysia Fulwiley
She's just incredible. She can score in any type of way. She can turn it on. She's great in transition, so just making sure that we try to limit her. But when she's in the game, they're special. I mean they're special at all times, but she really is a tough matchup for us, seeing who can guard her.
On if you have to learn how to win
I do believe in that theory. I think you have to learn a lot of things. I think you gotta learn how to lose. You had to learn how to win, you had to learn how to win big. You have to learn all of those things.
On the mental component to winning
I think we don't learn very well. We don't learn. We will make the same foul every game. We'll foul late shot clock, we will foul jump shooters, we'll foul and we don't need to. And again, we're so close and it is maddening and you will drive yourself crazy as a coach of, 'Hey, let's just fix the fouls, forget the rebounds, forget the offense, forget the defense, forget anything else, forget the foul shots, just fix how much we foul fix that one thing, let's learn from it. And then maybe our record is different.' And then you can go down that rabbit hole with every single thing and then you put them all together.
On mental toughness taking time
It does. And you have to be open to just learning from your mistakes. And you can't continue to go on the floor and not adjust to the officials and not to see somebody get a moving screen and then you go on the floor and get a moving screen to see somebody get a clamping call and then you go in and get a clamping call. You have to be able to learn from those things.
On how her team learning
I would imagine we as coaches need to do a better job and we just talked about that as teaching of instead of instructing, instead of telling of explaining the why and teaching and showing. And I do think we are getting better, but just breaking things down a little bit more and teaching them before we go into them and explaining the why.
– TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM.
– ENJOY VOLREPORT WITH A PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION.
– SUBSCRIBE TO THE VOLREPORT YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
– FOLLOW VOLREPORT ON TWITTER: @TennesseeRivals, @ByNoahTaylor, @RyanTSylvia, @Dale_Dowden, @ShayneP_Media.
