Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell met the media on Wednesday to preview her first season with Tennessee.

Here's everything she said at local media day.

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM

Hi, everyone. Thank you guys for coming today. We are very, very close to finally getting to be able to play. We're excited that our exhibition game is coming up quickly. We're tired of playing against each other. We're tired of playing against our practice team. We're a little beat up, banged up. So we're really, really, really looking forward to putting the finishing touches on them on some things and getting it started.

It is really, as a coach, you have these really tough moments, and those moments are sometimes when it's your final game and you have to go address your team and you have a lot of seniors or when you have a senior that has an injury and you can't help them. You feel really helpless as a coach. And so that one really broke my heart for her because she was getting so much better, and she was working so hard. And she's such a valuable person on this team. And so we're gonna lose a lot. We're gonna lose a downfield driver. We're gonna lose somebody who would have the ball in their hands. We're probably gonna lose our top defender. Somebody who plays incredibly hard, would go get rebounds. She kinda sets the blue collar culture that we want. So it's a big, big missing piece for us. I think she's a phenomenal human being just by being in the gym. She's still in great spirit. She makes people laugh. She still leans. She still talks. The only good thing to come out of this is we get her for another year, and I get to be around her for one year.

I think the way we play is definitely, it takes a a long time. It takes a couple months to figure out how to play quickly, how to get used to shooting quick shots, how to transition on defense. And you can only practice it so much, but I think usually the teams I've had in the past struggle for the first couple months. That being said, I still think we play two top 10, top 25 teams, so we don't have an easy schedule. We have a really nice mix of in state competition as well. So I think we still have our work cut out.

I know she was heartbroken on the day it happened. We talked about it. I talked to her mom about it, that God has a plan that we don't really understand right now and we can't see. So the three of us kinda talked on a on a FaceTime about that, and just who she is as a person, that she's gonna become. She's gonna make jokes. She's gonna make people laugh. She's always gonna bring something positive to the table. That's just who she is.

I think that probably has way more to do with you guys than it does me. But I appreciate that. I appreciate the coverage. I appreciate all of you guys getting us out there. Our team is working incredibly hard, and it's just been a whirlwind of a few months. But I know that there's some excitement and there's some buzz.

Just little details. Putting some more sets in, some more baseline out-of-bounds plays in, cleaning some things up that we probably will see, but we haven't seen. So we've been really spending a lot of time laying the foundation of pace on defense and offense. But now we just need to get into the final little details of things.

It's not gonna be pretty. It's gonna, I promise you, it's not gonna be pretty. So we wanna work hard. We wanna play hard. We wanna force the pace. We wanna be all over the floor. We wanna be a team that somebody hates to play, but we're still gonna make a lot of mistakes. We're gonna foul a lot. We're gonna turn the ball over a lot. It's still gonna be pretty, pretty raw on that end.

She's remarkable. She can score at all three levels. She's a phenomenal leader. Will put people in the right spot. She's an absolute gamer. She can shoot the three off the bounce. She can shoot it deep. She can shoot it off the catch. And those are the players I really like to have, especially people that are just great teammates. And I think that's who she is. She comes in every day with a great mindset of not only getting better herself, but bringing people around her. And when you get to this making people around her better, and when you get to this point in the season, I mean, we've been going for a long time. And so they're kind of just dreading it. She does a really good job of making sure everyone is focused.

I think that they have done a great job of explaining what they what their goals are of kind of how they want to be the team that people hate to play, how they have a chip on their shoulder, they have something to prove, they wanna get Tennessee back to where it used to be. I think that that is something that's in our daily conversations because of them, and they were very, very vocal and about that from day one.

I don't think there's any hiding the fact that we work really hard and we do a lot of running in this program. I think that's pretty much well known. And so everyone gives her a hard time. Oh, you have to do this for three more years. But we love it because we tell her, like, hey, she's gonna be a beast by the end of it. She's getting better and better by the day. She was truly made to play this way. She can press. She can score downhill. I think she's gonna have a bright, bright future because I think she's gonna have a really good year. And so I am really excited

We do starters a little bit differently and so a lot of people don't like it, but we're gonna do it based on productivity. And so whatever your productivity was the last game, that's who's gonna start the next game. So we told our teams that, I think maybe Monday, that's how we're gonna do it. And I've had some teams in the past with the same people start every game because you always have the same production and then you have some teams that it's mixed up every game. So we don't really have to fool with starting lineups a lot. It's earned every single game.

We have one coming up Sunday.

We've talked about it a lot and that how you're playing right now, you're gonna be significantly better in January. And they just have to trust that I've seen it enough to know, and they can go back and make a look at stats. There's proof there of former players who maybe didn't have the best non conference schedule, but by the time we got into conference, they were playing their best. Generally, our numbers will go up in the past. I don't know that will be the same going into SEC play, but they will get better. They will get more confident. They will get more comfortable.

Ruby is a phenomenal leader, as well, especially for somebody that's coming in new. And so I think that's something that's really special about this team is we have people that have been here for a while, and then you have some people that are new, and I think they blend very, very well. And if you didn't know, you wouldn't know who was new and who has been here. So from the day Ruby got here, she's been done a really good job of holding people accountable, being the first to the 50/50 balls on the floor, playing hard, talking. She has a bright future. I think she is gonna be one of those ones we just talked about that may start off a little slow, and then you're gonna see her take off.

You break it up in your practice plan of doing a segment of full court and then a segment of half court. And then as you get into specific games, like right now, we're gonna start working on actions that we haven't seen in the half court because if you're playing against yourselves or guys, you're only seeing kind of the same thing. So doing more of, like, a four out one in, because we will see more of a traditional post player back to the basket, working on all of those things. And that's what we're putting in this week, and we'll continue to do week by week based on the week by that might be the case.

It usually depends on each team, but in the past, November is horrendous, and December is a little bit better, and then you kinda hit your stride and you get more comfortable going into it.

He's a phenomenal recruiter. He's a very good on the floor coach. He's loud. Significantly louder than me. So that helps when you have somebody that's high energy, can back up what you say with a louder voice, all of those things. He brings a lot to the table. He's been on the road recruiting a lot. We can definitely feel the days that he's busy.

It's why they're here. Because I definitely knew that I had blind spots, and I think people around me that didn't. And they've done a really good job on the recruiting trail of knowing the players that I didn't know when I first got here. And knowing the SEC, and we're talking about scouts and dividing it up, and personnel, and play style. They're huge on all of that.

They're gonna be huge. And I'm excited to see what they do because they've been playing as guards this whole time, but as we get into SEC play, they're gonna be down there banging around in the basket. And so we need to be able to rely on them and trust them to do that. But I think they're two phenomenal things of what we like to do on the offensive end. And again, we would be toast without them trying to protect the rim and paint.

We are a little banged up and so Kaiya was a heartbreaker. Jill's returning this week. So she's still in her concussion protocol, but she's limited. She she can shoot. She's still not full contact yet. And then we have a few more that are banged up, but they should be back hopefully by the exhibition.

I think that they are getting more comfortable being uncomfortable, which is huge. This is something I always want out of our teams. We push them pretty hard every day, and so they're just understanding that that's part of it. That's what it takes. And so that is big. They're coming into their own roles, which is something that also takes time in this style of play. We take people when traditional basketball puts you in a box, you're a four, you're a driver, you're a shooter, and we're trying to get you out of that box, and we're trying to put you to do something that you haven't been doing. And we try to make you uncomfortable. Now is the time when we try to really harness your roles. Right? What are you good at? Now is the time when we try to really harness your roles, right? What are you good at? What are you gonna be doing? And I've seen them come into their roles more and more the last two to three weeks and it's made our team better.

I think how consistent their leadership is, how they lead from a genuine place. They don't lead and bark at their teammates. They just lead as great people who have earned the right to talk to their teammates, and they want what's best. They have the team's ear, and they can it if they need to, or they can just say it and everyone will listen. And it's very, very difficult when you have a head coaching change to lead because nobody knows what to expect. Nobody knows what the standard is. Nobody knows what's gonna make me mad or what's not gonna make me mad. And for them to be able to step up and do that right away, it says a lot about them.

I think in the past month, Zee Spearman has gotten tremendously better, which is big for us. Kaniya Boyd is another one because she sat out an entire year. She started off a little rough, and she's really, really, really taken off. And so hers will be more of a confidence thing of just letting her do more with the ball, pouring into her a little bit on that end.

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