KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In October, earlier than Kim Caldwell had coached a sport for Tennessee, she sat on an orange sofa in her workplace and tried to get snug.
This was each a bodily and philosophical problem for the first-year Girl Volunteers coach on the time. At 5 months pregnant together with her first baby, there have been sure realities about what “snug” may appear to be shifting ahead for her, and she or he missed the caffeine that she had given up months earlier (particularly at this level within the yr when workforce prep might appear endless).
However there was a deeper query: How does Caldwell — who had coached simply 33 Division I basketball video games — get snug able as soon as held by one of the vital vital folks in girls’s basketball? And never simply that, however how does she proceed when this system had fallen from its earlier heights to a middling territory, which in Girl Vols-speak, is as dangerous as irrelevance? As somebody who had coached towards simply three energy convention opponents, how would she give you the solutions to get this program again to the usual that Pat Summitt set?
Caldwell, 36, grew up when Tennessee and UConn dominated girls’s faculty basketball. Summitt and Geno Auriemma — their depth and their rivalry — broke by way of the noise to make these epic matchups a part of the mainstream sporting tradition.
“It made folks speak about girls’s sports activities. It made folks speak about girls’s basketball,” Caldwell mentioned. “It was such an unbelievable time.”
At her AAU practices in West Virginia, Caldwell’s groups have been cut up up not by Group A versus Group B however by the Girl Vols versus the Huskies. At a event as a highschool participant, she regarded into the stands and noticed Summitt and Auriemma sitting subsequent to at least one one other evaluating recruits and later, strolling previous Summitt within the hallway.
She by no means thought — at the same time as lately as a yr in the past — that she can be teaching towards Auriemma in that rivalry sport, or throwing on an orange pullover and strolling into tournaments to recruit identical to Summitt. Final summer season, as she ready for one such event in Chicago, she needed to give herself a pep speak earlier than strolling into the health club — “Right here we go. You’ve bought shiny orange on. Maintain your head up excessive. Get in there,” she advised herself — as she puzzled if any gamers would react to her the way in which she as soon as needed to Summit.
Together with UConn and Stanford, Tennessee is tied to a singular coach like nearly no different program in girls’s faculty basketball — or faculty sports activities. So even on the times when she doesn’t drive previous the nine-foot statue of Summitt exterior Thompson-Boling Area on her approach to Tennessee employees workplaces, she nonetheless walks by a glass show of the eight nationwide championship trophies that Summitt received. “The Summitt” is painted in script on the ground the place Caldwell now coaches her residence video games. After which there’s the Tennessee orange. A coloration that Summitt made iconic.
“I’ll by no means be Pat Summitt. No person can, however I’ll try on daily basis to be somebody she can be happy with.”
New Girl Vols head coach Kim Caldwell on the legacy of this system she is about to steer. pic.twitter.com/yMZCs4M2xe
— Karthik Venkataraman (@KarthikV_) April 9, 2024
In her e book, Summitt wrote, “I bear in mind each participant — each single one — who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a daring, aggravating coloration. … However to us, the colour is a flag of pleasure, as a result of it identifies us as Girl Vols and due to this fact as girls of an unmistakable sort. Fighters.”
Since Summitt retired in 2012, Tennessee has been preventing. First, to stay on the prime, the place Summitt had led this system. After which, to retain relevance. Each endeavors have been largely failures, although this system retained some status merely due to its historical past.
Now Caldwell, who had one season of teaching Division I basketball below her belt when she took the job in April, holds the reins to one of many sport’s most vital applications.
“There’s an unlimited weight that comes with it, and I knew that going into it. You speak concerning the historical past, what Pat Summitt did for sports activities generally, what she did for the state of Tennessee, what she did for basketball,” Caldwell mentioned. “The place basketball is now. … I don’t know that we might be right here with out her.”
However over the previous couple of seasons, as girls’s basketball has grown increasingly more in style, Tennessee has been surprisingly lacking from the fold. As the sport strikes ahead, Tennessee hopes that its most up-to-date (surprising) rent means the Girl Vols don’t miss the subsequent chapter, too.
The shock across the girls’s basketball world was palpable final April when Tennessee fired Kellie Harper. Many assumed she would get at the least one other season to try to flip across the program.
However any shock round Harper’s firing paled when in comparison with the response when Tennessee introduced its new head coach lower than every week later: a swift “who?”
Caldwell had simply completed her first season at Marshall. Although she had led the mid-major to the NCAA Event for the primary time since 1997 (and simply the second time in program historical past), it misplaced to four-seed Virginia Tech by 43. Earlier than Marshall, Caldwell had spent seven seasons as the top coach at her alma mater, Division II Glenville State College in West Virginia.
The minimal Division I and energy convention expertise was apparent, but it surely was simply as evident that she had no ties to Summitt and even the state of Tennessee. This system stayed inside the Summitt tree after she retired, hiring Tennessee native Holly Warlick, a longtime assistant and former participant below Summitt, after which, in 2019, turned to Harper, a Tennessee native, Summitt protégé and beloved alum. Neither returned this system to its elite perch, failing to achieve the Remaining 4 for greater than a decade.
Recruits had by no means witnessed Tennessee obtain the way in which this system traditionally had, although their mother and father remembered. Getting this rent proper was vital; each passing day seemingly moved this system farther from rivalry.
Provided that Harper was fired with 4 years left on her contract and she or he had acquired an extension from Tennessee athletic director Danny White only a yr earlier, most within the trade assumed such a drastic transfer indicated that White deliberate to swing for the fences. Harper earned $1.1 million a yr — making her the twelfth highest-paid coach in girls’s faculty hoops — so if the Girl Vols upped that wage even a bit, they may possible lure a high-profile coach to Knoxville. Tennessee alum and Duke coach Kara Lawson and Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon, who had simply received two WNBA titles, have been thought-about folks White ought to pursue. USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb was among the many distinguished names on media teaching lists. A report related Tennessee’s search agency to Indiana coach Teri Moren.
The names being floated have been esteemed inside girls’s basketball. Lawson, the one UT alum at the moment teaching at a excessive degree, was the one Summitt connection within the group.
From Knoxville, White felt a draw back from his predecessors, who had employed from the Summitt tree.
“We had already gone by way of these chapters twice,” he mentioned. “If there was any strain in any respect, it was in all probability extra so to go exterior (the tree) and check out one thing completely different. I don’t know if that was actual or one thing I invented myself, however I actually didn’t really feel strain to remain inside coach Summitt’s tree.”
In administrative circles, White’s selection was surprising, however his strategies weren’t shocking.
Because the Buffalo AD, he employed males’s basketball coach Nate Oats, who had solely two years of school expertise as an assistant and had solely been a head coach of a highschool boy’s basketball workforce. (Alabama employed Oats 5 seasons later.) White additionally employed Lance Leipold as Buffalo’s soccer coach regardless of Leipold’s earlier seven seasons off everybody’s radar at a Division III faculty. (Kansas employed him 5 years later.) At UCF in 2018, White employed Josh Heupel. Many assumed Heupel’s profession had dead-ended three years earlier and have been shocked he was touchdown an enormous job. After three bowl sport appearances with UCF, White introduced Heupel to Tennessee, which is within the Faculty Soccer Playoff this season because the No. 7 seed.
“He’s form of bought a Midas contact,” Leipold advised The Athletic in 2022.
Hiring for the Tennessee girls’s job is its personal beast. His conversations with Caldwell reminded him of speaking to Heupel. He preferred that her system was completely different and thrilling, using a full-court urgent protection that pressured turnovers, an offense that took early 3s and hockey-style substitutions that stored gamers’ legs recent all through the video games. Her pattern dimension at Marshall was small, however this system had gone from .500 in convention play to successful the league title in her first yr.
“I believe extra continuously in numerous sports activities, on the highest degree, persons are seeing,” White mentioned, “that teaching is teaching.”
The choice made one factor clear: Hiring Caldwell might make White look prescient — and extra importantly, the transfer might return Tennessee to the highest of ladies’s basketball — if it really works out. If it doesn’t, it possible can be thought-about an apparent and avoidable misstep in caretaking this system.
For the primary time in a very long time, extra eyes and scrutiny are on Tennessee. Not due to excessive expectations, however as a result of everybody desires to know: Is Caldwell the reply to the post-Summitt conundrum?
Kim Caldwell is the primary coach employed since Pat Summitt’s retirement to not be from her teaching tree. (Bryan Lynn / Icon Sportswire through Getty Photographs)
When Caldwell’s agent, Brian Stanchak, referred to as her on April 1 to inform her Tennessee’s search agency was gauging her curiosity, Caldwell puzzled if it was an April Idiot’s Day joke.
“Actually. I used to be considering, ‘Anybody however me. There’s bought to be those that have extra expertise below their belt or an assistant,’” Caldwell mentioned. “I imply, it’s been one yr (in Division I).”
Caldwell took a name with Tennessee largely for the expertise of interviewing for a distinguished place. She was genuinely comfortable at Marshall. She and her husband, Justin, had simply purchased their dream home — a four-bedroom customized residence on a spacious lot with an house above the storage for her mother.
Different mid-major and energy convention jobs had come up throughout her head teaching profession, and her response was all the time the identical: “I like successful and I like my gamers. I don’t love every thing else that comes with teaching, proper?” she mentioned. “The decrease degree you’re, the extra basketball you often get to do. That’s as sincere, as clear as I will be about it.”
However the Tennessee job was completely different.
With a twister warning in West Virginia hitting proper earlier than her scheduled interview slot, she huddled in a closet, quite than suspending due to the inclement climate. She sweated by way of the interview, not as a result of she was nervous however as a result of the closet was so stuffy. When it ended, she thanked Tennessee for the dialog and assumed that may be the top of it.
However when White needed her to go to Knoxville, it started to sink in that she really had a shot.
“Do I keep right here as a result of I adore it and I’m comfortable, or do I take the very best job that I’m ever going to get supplied proper now?” Caldwell mentioned. “As a result of I can work for 80 extra years, and I’ll by no means get supplied a job of this magnitude once more.”
Caldwell was shocked at how snug she felt in Knoxville, and leaned towards a sure if a suggestion got here.
However there have been nonetheless detractors. Her mother requested why she would go away a state the place she was beloved to educate someplace she wouldn’t be. ”They’re gonna be like: Who is that this? Why is she now our coach?” Caldwell mentioned her mother cautioned.
She advised her mother the identical factor she had advised her gamers: Don’t depart any regrets on the ground.
Danny White when he employed coach Kim Caldwell: “For followers, when you like what you’re seeing inside Neyland Stadium when it comes to the quantity of factors we rating, I believe you’re going to like what you see on the basketball ground.” https://t.co/Wmq8BFmfiy
— Josh Ward (@Josh_Ward) December 14, 2024
So when White referred to as, she accepted. However she additionally knew the pressures that may come at Tennessee. An antsy fan base, a motivated athletic division, the ladies’s basketball world questioning how she might clear up a puzzle that had confirmed unimaginable for different Division II and mid-major coaches.
“I believe you simply should guess on your self and say, ‘Hey, you’re gonna be uncomfortable for some time, however I used to be simply uncomfortable for six months. Sure, I will be uncomfortable once more,’” Caldwell mentioned. “You guess by yourself success.”
Each season, Caldwell retains a pocket book on her workforce, what’s going proper and improper, and, most significantly, how she’s feeling. Even throughout a season when the strain is so completely different and the stage is a lot larger, she finds constant traits in what she writes and feels from yr to yr.
“I’m depressing,” she mentioned with fun in mid-December. “So I’m proper on monitor.”
That is the way it goes for Caldwell’s system: In November and most of December, she’s depressing. She by no means desires to speak basketball at Thanksgiving. By Christmas? She may be prepared to speak hoops as issues often begin coming collectively.
With the Girl Vols sitting at 8-0, a number of of the early questions have been answered. Tennessee picked up vital wins over Florida State and Iowa earlier this month, however Caldwell is aware of SEC play can be completely different.
House attendance is the very best in Knoxville because the 2015-16 season, and recruiting took off instantly with Caldwell. She’s already picked up two top-25 gamers within the 2025 class, matching a tempo near Summitt’s in her closing 5 years. By comparability, Warlick signed 10 in seven seasons, and Harper signed only one in her 5 courses from 2020-24.
“I used to be fairly shocked at first. After which I form of advised myself, ‘Why not?’ It’s not like this system was a nationwide powerhouse,” mentioned ESPN analyst Andraya Carter, a member of Summitt’s closing recruiting class at Tennessee. “I had a number of reservations, however I began seeing among the (recruits) she was getting. I simply was like, ‘Let’s go.’ The system that she’s working is actually one the place you possibly can’t hesitate, so for me, as an alum, not an analyst, I’m not going to hesitate both. … Let’s see what she’s bought.”
Caldwell’s Girl Vols lead the nation with 98 factors per sport and switch over opponents a nationally greatest 30 occasions a sport. Final season, Marshall completed within the prime 5 nationally in each classes — in order that half feels fairly acquainted.
simply getting began. pic.twitter.com/7cJKbcFgjb
— Girl Vols Basketball (@LadyVol_Hoops) December 14, 2024
However Caldwell’s nonetheless getting used to some variations. At Marshall, she had three assistants, one graduate assistant and two managers. At Tennessee, she has a employees of 13 and 9 managers. She by no means had a video coordinator earlier than coming to Knoxville; now apply and sport footage are prepared and clipped for her practically by the point apply is over. She mentioned she discovered extra throughout her first three weeks in Knoxville than a complete season at Marshall.
With SEC play across the nook, the hardest assessments are nonetheless forward of the Girl Vols, however with every win, the argument grows that White made the precise transfer and Caldwell could possibly be the surprising reply at Tennessee. Will that be sufficient to deliver this system again to its earlier heights? Caldwell’s assured sufficient to guess on herself and her workforce.
“You don’t flip it down,” Caldwell mentioned. “And then you definitely spend on daily basis making an attempt to be sure that they understand they didn’t make a mistake.”
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photographs: Bryan Lynn / Icon Sportswire, Damian Strohmeyer / Sports activities Illustrated through Getty Photographs, Donald Web page / Getty Photographs)
