As spring breaks go, Tennessee's women's basketball players won't be basking on some beach by day and reveling through their nights. Well, they better not be anyway.

Recovery and rejuvenation should be the order of their days in advance of the NCAA tournament. The schedule affords the Lady Vols essentially two weeks between their 84-76 loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC tournament and their NCAA opener. Judging by their recent efforts, they need every second of this competitive break.

Twice during her Vanderbilt postmortem, UT coach Kim Caldwell conceded to some load mismanagement regarding the season.

"I think we haven't really handled our load the way we should have in hindsight," she said. "I think we're tired and need a rest, get healthy, just get a reset."

Caldwell's assessment spoke to the rigors of SEC play as well as her being a first-year coach at this level, working with a new roster. The team didn't completely recover from an 82-58 beatdown at Kentucky a week before the conference tournament, a game in which Caldwell said, "I looked at them and they didn't really look like they had a whole lot to give back. The first time I've really seen that from them."

For a team that bases its strategy primarily on pressure defense, Caldwell hopes the break is restorative for Tennessee's offense. In its last four games, the team shot 36.6 percent from the floor and 23.8 percent on 3-pointers.

"I think when our offense is inconsistent, everything else goes down," Caldwell said. "I think we're at our best when we're sharing the ball and our offense is flowing and we play with a little juice."

Here's some other Tennessee basketball thoughts and observations:

-In their last two regular season games, the Vols have looked like they could relate to the Lady Vols' weariness. No matter, it's full steam ahead to the SEC tournament.

"This time of year, you got to put everything into it, every single game you play," Coach Rick Barnes said. ". . . I've never coached a team that didn't go on the floor wanting to win that game."

Barnes was responding to a line of thinking about this tournament, namely that a long weekend in Nashville playing Final Four-level competition is too much in advance of the NCAA tournament. While Barnes' mind set reflects standard procedure, it shouldn't preclude discretion. I don't think three more SEC games in three days would be good for the Vols' NCAA chances. Two games arguably might be too much.

-It was nice seeing Zakai Zeigler embrace Barnes and lift his coach off the ground after the senior point guard's final home game on Saturday. Even nicer was Barnes thinking "that I should be picking him up, you know?"

-Shoutout to former Lady Vol Kara Lawson, who coached Duke Sunday to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship. Lawson's Blue Devils erased a 14-point first half deficit to beat North Carolina State 76-62. It was Duke's first conference tournament championship in 12 years. The players celebrated by hoisting Lawson into the air.

Lawson referenced Lady Vols coaching legend Pat Summitt in saying, "I thought of her this morning when I was getting ready to go to the game. I thought how excited she would be for the opportunity that we had, and I know she would be really proud of the defensive performance in the second half by our team."

Lawson is in her fifth season as Duke's coach. Her former Tennessee teammate, Kyra Elzy, is in her first season as a Blue Devils assistant.

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Dan Fleser is a 1980 graduate of the University of Missouri, who has covered University of Tennessee athletics since 1988. He is a member of the Tennessee Sportswriters, U.S Basketball Writers and Greater Knoxville Sports Halls of Fame. He can be reached at [email protected].