​By Trevor Jolley  When guard/forward Gabby Minus first arrived in Knoxville in mid-June, she was the only freshman Lady Vol basketball player on campus at the time. As it turned out, she was not alone for long.Minus wasted no time meeting the rest of her teammates who were already living in Knoxville. That same day, she joined her new UT basketball sisters at an apartment complex pool, instantly planting the team’s bonding seed. “As soon as I got here, the people who were here before me welcomed me in full-on,” Minus said. “That was really cool. I was just happy to be there.”The bonding was just getting started. Over the course of the summer, the team spent nearly all of its time hanging out as a group, including swimming at the quarry, dining at new restaurants around town and even little activities like lounging at an apartment together. If there was something to do, they did it together.”We just do everything we can together,” senior guard Rylie Theuerkauf said. “We don’t get bored of each other.”These summer traditions stayed on track as summer transitioned into the start of the fall semester.For Theuerkauf, a post-workout “Taco Tuesday” still stands out as one of her favorite team activities.”We’ll be in the gym for six hours a day, and then we’ll go get food [together],” Theuerkauf said. “Every Tuesday is Taco Tuesday. We just do little things, always together.”For Minus, freshman bonding means discovering campus with fellow college-newcomer Irene Oboaywoduo, a guard from London, England.”One thing I’m doing now is taking adventures around campus on my scooter with Irene, since we’re the only two [Lady Vol basketball] freshmen on campus,” Minus said. “We just explore and ride around. We see what’s going on around campus.”  As much as the team spends time as a group off the court, a crucial part of their togetherness ahead of the season forms on the court.   This year’s Lady Vol basketball team features an entirely new roster of players who arrived at Tennessee from programs around the nation. Getting familiar with new faces is an annual tradition in collegiate athletics, but this year’s introduction of teammates presents a unique opportunity.Coach Kim Caldwell and her staff carefully selected all 15 members of the squad for the specific features they all shared, including their competitive nature, level of commitment, willingness to be coached and fit into the desired culture for the team. Caldwell acknowledged with players before they committed that this year was going to be her most hands-on and demanding year of coaching yet. It’s an opportunity the team embraced head-on and is using to grow closer as a group. “Her plan for this year is to be the hardest year that she’s ever coached,” junior guard Naomi White said. “She wants us to be better, do better. Not even just [in] basketball, but as people too.”White is not the only one excited at the prospect of getting better. The new season presents new challenges for all players,