The Lady Vols beat UConn 80-76 in Knoxville to mark Tennessee’s first win in the rivalry since 2007.

After the game, Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell met with the media.

Here is everything she had to say.

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM

I was really proud of our team. That’s a level of play that I knew we could achieve. We just had failed to achieve it. And so it was really good to get that win tonight. It was good to get a close win. I think our crowd was phenomenal. They were worth 10 to 15 points easily. And so I appreciate everyone that came out and cheered.

I welcomed it with open arms. I thought that we played really hard. I think this was the game where we played the hardest, the most consistent. And so for them to run over and give me a hug was great. I want them to enjoy every moment of this.

We had poise down the stretch. I think we played with confidence. I think we played to win as opposed to afraid to lose. And again, I think the crowd had a lot to do with it. We had a good week of practice. We had a really good bye week. It did not translate to our Missouri game, but we had a really good week. I thought we turned a corner. I do think we were getting better. And so it was good to hopefully get over the hump, beat a top opponent.

I didn’t care for it. No, they did not surprise me. I did not care for it. It was definitely overkill. It wasn’t cups of water. It was bottles of water and I surrendered.

We’ve talked about that at length every game. And I thought we just really played hard on the rebounds. And of all of the other games we had where we lost, if we would have won the rebounding battle. We win the game.

I don’t think she still felt great. She did a really good job of fighting through adversity at the beginning of the game. She didn’t see some shots go in. She still got teammates opened. She made some mistakes that were frustrating and she still stepped up big for us at the end.

I think Zee, there was a different version of Zee coming into this game. She was locked in, she was focused. I think this game really meant something to her and she had two good days leading up to it.

We wanted to out rebound them by 10. We thought that that was the margin we needed to have to be in the game. We did not shoot the ball great, so we had a lot of opportunities to go get those rebounds. I think they turned it on at the end and went and got too many second chance opportunities down the stretch, which was concerning. So still, there’s still room to grow.

I think we’re getting better. I think we, like Jewel said, had a lot of games that, I mean, they still stick with me. The one possession games against top 10 opponents. And we really needed to beat a top 10 opponent. I think that we could do that. I think we deserve that. I think we practice hard enough to do that. We just were making too many mistakes and we talked at length about these top teams. You can’t make those mistakes and I do think we lessened those.

I’ll say this. I didn’t do it. They did it and they just made up their minds that they wanted to do it. I didn’t score one point. I didn’t get one stop. And they locked in and they wanted it and they played incredibly hard. And that’s something we’ve talked about, is you need to be tired, you need to be playing hard. And they can be excited for me, but I’m more excited for them.

I think relief. I think I’ve seen us do this. We practice it in practice. We did it early in the year. I mean, our Iowa game wasn’t really, it was not a blowout, it was a close game until the end. And the Florida State game was close game. And so it’s almost like we kind of just lost our confidence. And it was just a sigh of relief to say, ‘Okay, we’ve done this before. We do this in practice. We can do this on the floor.’

I have no idea if she even said anything to me. I didn’t even know that happened until you said that. I was trying to get out of there.

I think she’d be thrilled with the effort and the rebounding. I am sure she is up in heaven with my dad. They’re probably having a cold one celebrating.