The Lady Vols have hired Marshall coach Kim Caldwell to take over the Tennessee women's basketball program.
I spoke with Chris McLaughlin of HerdNation to figure out what the Lady Vols are getting in their new head coach.
Here's what he had to say.
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It was short, but what stood out about her tenure at Marshall?
McLaughlin: "How quickly she turned things around for a program that had not been good in quite some time. She didn't just raise the level at Marshall, she took a team that was .500 the previous year and went 17-1 in the Sun Belt and won the conference tournament championship. That kind of improvement at the D1 level doesn't happen very often."
What do you think makes her a successful coach?
McLaughlin: "Her system. Caldwell's teams run a full court press the entire game and shoot a ton of threes. Marshall led the country in three-point attempts/game and was second in the entire country in turnovers forced/game. She also plays a ton of players. 12 players averaged at least 11 minutes/game."
It might be tough to tell with how short her Marshall tenure was, but what was her recruiting like (HS/Portal)?
McLaughlin: "What is crazy is that Kim's two best players this year were former D2 players. The team's third best player was a transfer from Mississippi State. Caldwell did not sign a single high school player during the signing period in November and the buzz around the program was that she was planning on hitting the transfer portal very hard to shore up her 2024 roster. I would expect much of the same at UT."
How did the fanbase like her? Players?
McLaughlin: "Fanbase absolutely loved her. What's not to like? She doesn’t have an ego and her teams are flat-out fun to watch. She also seemed to have a very close bond with her players. Many have reached out on social media since she took the job with nothing but love and support for their now former coach."
How seamless did the transition appear from a D2 powerhouse to D1?
McLaughlin: "I'm not even sure there was a transition, to be honest. Marshall did start off a bit slow in out-of-conference play but almost all their losses early were by only a couple of buckets. But, by December the team was starting to gel and Marshall actually beat Florida and was up on Wake Forest in the 4th quarter before falling short."
Do you feel like she's ready to be successful at the SEC level?
McLaughlin: "Honestly, I'm a bit surprised she got the job. I think she's a wonderful coach and will very likely have a lot of success at UT, but Lady Vol bball is the top of the food chain and I would have thought they would have gone after a coach with more sustained success at the power conference level. The biggest question to me will be how top talent (the kind she'll have access to at UT) responds to her system of playing so many kids. Will that be a plus (rotation will be deep, so lots of kids will play), or will some players shy away knowing they likely won't be playing 35+ minutes/game?"
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