BIRMINGHAM — Tennessee is gone; Tennessee is not going anywhere.
The Texas Longhorns beat the Tennessee Volunteers, 67–59, in the Sweet 16, but every arrow in Kim Caldwell’s program is pointing up. This season began with skepticism and ended with affirmation: Tennessee is on its way back to being a top-10 program, and that might be underselling it.
“She’s done an unbelievable job with that group,” Texas coach Vic Schaefer said, “They play so hard. You’ve really got to execute.”
Pat Summitt won eight national championships at Tennessee, and she was such a singular figure in the history of the sport that any replacement would seem unworthy. But Tennessee made a classic succession mistake, the same one that Alabama football and North Carolina men’s basketball have made at various points: It hired people who understood the program rather than people to run one.
Holly Warlick got the job in 2012 after serving on Summitt’s staff. When Tennessee fired Warlick in ’19, Kellie Harper got the job because she had played for Summitt. This doesn’t mean Warlick and Harper are bad coaches. But Tennessee is too great a job to give to a career assistant, as Warlick was, or a coach who got fired from her only major-conference coaching job, like Harper was at North Carolina State.
Vols fans were unsure about Caldwell a year ago, when athletic director Danny White hired her away from the Marshall Thundering Herd. This was partly because Caldwell came from outside the program and partly because her fast-paced, jack-up-some-threes style was such a departure from Summitt. Those fans should be sure about her now. When Tennessee was at its peak under Summitt, you could say two things about the Vols: They almost always had more talent than their opponents and almost never relied on it.
Caldwell’s first Tennessee team was relentless. After the loss to Texas, Samara Spencer, who transferred from the Arkansas Razorbacks, said Caldwell “really only asks for two things: energy and effort. That’s all she really wants from us.” Easy to say; hard to coax out of players. Caldwell did it.
In the age of open player compensation, a brand as strong as Tennessee should attract top talent. But passion is not enough. Coaching always matters. Caldwell’s style should appeal to recruits—she has a touted class coming in—and her tendency to substitute in waves means she should be able to keep players around. The South Carolina Gamecocks are a juggernaut because a lot of talented players play hard for a great coach. Why wouldn’t that work at Tennessee?
Caldwell said earlier this week that she thought the Sweet 16 was a realistic goal before the season. The Vols made it. She can now go to every high school player, transfer and donor and show them: My way works here.
“I am incredibly thankful for this group that I got to coach,” Caldwell said. “Any success that we have at Tennessee from here on out is because of this team.”
When Caldwell got the Tennessee job, she said “there is not a single person who has gone through this program that I could even come close to beating one-on-one.” It was self-deprecating. It was also true. But if she had any insecurities about coaching at Tennessee, she never showed them. She even gave birth to her first child while she had the flu and returned to the sideline a week later, which is a Pat Summitt move if there ever was one.
College sports are in such a perpetual state of upheaval that any program can lose its way. Caldwell could still fail. But the chances of that happening feel slimmer every day. Caldwell seems comfortable with her fan base’s shift from serious doubts to outside expectations.
“We spent a lot of this season trying to prove people wrong,” Caldwell said, “but when you reframe it, you’ve got to prove people right.”
On some level, Tennessee will always be Pat Summitt’s program. But it has to be more than that. Caldwell said that next season, “We’ll have more coaches on the floor. We won’t be having to teach 15 players a new brand of basketball.” Her way worked—a new brand melded with an old one. This team sent an alert to the rest of the sport: Here, finally, comes Tennessee.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Kim Caldwell’s Way Is Working at Tennessee.
