Kim Caldwell taking Tennessee Lady Vols to Sweet 16 in first season should count as a successful debut.
To elevate further, Tennessee requires more star power. Kim Caldwell’s first recruiting class is a good sign.
Kim Caldwell won over team and fans in first season. Beating UConn helped.
These Tennessee Lady Vols had no business reaching the Elite Eight – so there’s no shame in losing Saturday in the Sweet 16 to No. 1 Texas.
The Lady Vols showed elite buy-in to first-year coach Kim Caldwell and her high-intensity, high-substitution system, but this did not resemble an elite roster.
Texas possesses an elite roster, and the Longhorns outlasted No. 5 Tennessee 67-59 in a game during which Texas’ premier defense showed its horns.
Texas moved within a win of its first Final Four appearance since 2003. The Lady Vols still haven’t made a Final Four since Pat Summitt retired, but they have a blossoming coach in Caldwell, 36, who showed enough potential this season to inspire belief that she can end the drought. Tennessee’s last Final Four came in 2008.
The Lady Vols are not back, because reaching the Sweet 16 does not constitute being back for a program that’s never missed the NCAA Tournament. Reaching the Sweet 16 is not hard at Tennessee. The first two coaches to succeed Summitt, Holly Warlick and Kellie Harper, combined to take Tennessee to the Sweet 16 six times in 11 tournament appearances.
Even so, Caldwell reaching this round counts as an achievement considering the incomplete roster she inherited when Tennessee hired her in April to replace Harper.
Now comes the hard part: Elevating Tennessee from Sweet 16 to the sport’s elite stratosphere, where fellow SEC programs South Carolina, LSU and now Texas reside.
Sweet 16 good start for Kim Caldwell at Tennessee
Harper made coaching at Tennessee look harder than it is. The bluest of blood pumps through this program’s veins.
Harper never missed an NCAA Tournament in her five seasons. She never failed to reach at least the second round, other than in 2020, when COVID canceled March Madness. She also never advanced to the Elite Eight. That amounted to a fireable offense, and the coaching change reaffirmed the program’s standards.
Caldwell made reaching the Sweet 16 look easier than it should have been, though. She inherited a roster in need of repair. Harper signed only one high school recruit in her final two seasons. Rickea Jackson, the best player from Harper’s final team, headed to the WNBA.
Caldwell, after one season coaching Marshall, established with her first remarks at Tennessee that she wouldn’t let the job’s demands overwhelm her. She vowed her high-octane style that includes line-change substitutions, resembling a hockey substitution system, would work at Tennessee.
‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think we could do it here,’ Caldwell said confidently last April.
Caldwell’s moxie helped win over her roster, and also a fan base that possessed initial doubts about a coach who had only one season of Division I coaching experience, before Tennessee surprised even Caldwell by targeting her in its coaching search.
Caldwell gave birth to a son, her first child, in January. She returned to coaching one week after childbirth and missed only one game throughout the process. Seventeen days after childbirth, Caldwell’s Lady Vols beat rival UConn to snap the program’s four-game losing streak against the Huskies, and Rocky Top swooned over its new coach.
Caldwell made a single promise before her first season: ‘We want to be the hardest-playing team in the country.’
Hard to argue that Tennessee failed to achieve that goal. The Lady Vols played harder and smarter in Caldwell’s first season than in Harper’s last, but they lacked the star power to reach the Final Four.
Because, that’s what reaching a Final Four requires: elite players.
It’s not an accident that Paige Bueckers, Lauren Betts and Aneesah Morrow are still playing in the Elite Eight. Or, Madison Booker, the Texas standout who went for 17 points in the Sweet 16.
Amassing elite talent becomes Caldwell’s next task. Her initial season should impress donors, whose checkbooks influence recruiting in this NIL-driven landscape.
Lady Vols’ recruiting skyrockets behind Kim Caldwell
Insufficient recruiting contributed to Harper’s ouster. Caldwell began remedying that by signing the nation’s No. 2-ranked class, featuring five recruits ranked in the ESPN top 60.
And still, I wonder how Caldwell’s high-substitution system will work after the program’s talent upgrades. Tennessee had one player, Talaysia Cooper, earn first- or second-team all-SEC accolades this season. She averaged fewer than 24 minutes per game. No Tennessee player averaged 25 minutes.
High-volume substitution helped Tennessee this season and, apparently, Caldwell’s style is not dissuading recruits.
Texas coach Vic Schaefer, before the Sweet 16, said such a system wouldn’t fly with some of his players.
‘I’ve got some competitors on my team. If I was yanking them out of the game, they’d be (ticked) off at me,’ Schaefer said. ‘They like to play.’
To his point, Booker played 33 minutes against Tennessee. Point guard Rori Harmon played 37.
Stars like those two are why Texas remains alive in this tournament. Caldwell’s first squad didn’t include anyone like Booker or Harmon, so count this Sweet 16 as a sufficient start.
‘This team has laid the foundation,’ Caldwell said.
Next stop, becoming elite, after building a roster that can achieve that feat.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.