Replacing Kellie Harper, Kim Caldwell’s tenure at Tennessee began with an empty locker room. After losing all eight returning players to the transfer portal this offseason, the new head coach is facing the most daunting roster rebuild in college basketball.

Faced with a complete roster overhaul, Caldwell likened the frantic recruiting pace to a common social phenomenon. “With the portal, it’s like speed dating,” she said. “You don’t have a lot of time. You do your background checks, you talk when they visit, and a little bit coming up to it.”

Caldwell also pointed out that the same urgency carries over to the process of making recruitment plans for reforming the team, especially given the condition the team found itself in. “Everything happened so quick, and that’s just what the transfer portal is. Things happen fast, you make quick decisions, and you hit the ground running.” 

Coach Caldwell has since aggressively used the transfer portal to construct an entirely new team. She has already officially signed or received commitments from nine transfer portal players, alongside two freshmen. 

Key additions include two-time All-Big Ten guard Kaylene Smikle from Maryland, high-scoring Northern Arizona guard Naomi White, and Liberty guard Avery Mills, who was the first transfer to join the rebuild. Texas A&M’s Fatmata Janneh, one of the top rebounders in the SEC last season, and Zhen Craft, who is coming off her freshman season with Georgia, are also joining.

Caldwell identified a shared sense of motivation among her new players, noting they all arrived in Knoxville with something to prove. “I think one thing every player we signed has in common is that they have a chip on their shoulder. They have different routes to get here, something to prove, they are all hungry to win,” she said.

The urgency for a complete overhaul stems from what Caldwell called ‘the worst year of her professional career,’ a season that ended in a 16-14 record—the program’s worst winning percentage ever. The collapse included a first-round NCAA tournament exit and an eight-game losing streak, the longest since the program’s NCAA era began in 1981.

Hopefully, the rebuild will attract more players and turn things around for Tennessee next season.

Kim Caldwell adopts “tough love” recruiting tactics over traditional sales pitch approach

The Lady Vols aren’t considering players who won’t put in extra effort next season. And Caldwell is using that approach to recruit players ahead of the coming season. Instead of a soft sales pitch, Caldwell’s approach was blunt, telling recruits exactly how demanding the program would be: “That this is how hard we are just gonna be, you have to be willing to do this.”

They are not going with the approach some programs adopt: try to sell what players stand to gain by joining the program. Caldwell said, “It gets really easy to start to outrecruit people. To sell that, ‘Tennessee can do this for you, it’s an amazing brand’.” However, for her and the Tennessee program, they have decided to go the exact opposite route. “We kinda want the exact opposite of this saying you are here to help Tennessee,” she said.

For her, playing for the Lady Volunteers next season is going to be hard. And to any players coming in, they have to believe in themselves enough to do it. With a roster built on grit rather than glamour, Caldwell is betting that a team of players who want to be at Tennessee is more dangerous than one that simply was.