Kim Caldwell’s mission is clear in Year 2: ‘Try to prove people wrong’

The spirit of disruption will be carried in Caldwell’s second season in Knoxville, but this time around, things are a little different. Caldwell and her coaching staff inherited a team last year; the 2025-26 roster has six returning players and eight recruits. The returners have bought into Caldwell’s system completely; the newcomers were brought in because they already fit it so well. In short, Tennessee will be a threat — and that’s exactly what Caldwell wants.

The collegiate offseason is shorter than one might realize — teams essentially have May and most of June off before they’re called back to campus — and there’s a lot that happens off the court to cram into those few weeks. But the opportunity to reevaluate and reassess is omnipresent, and Caldwell knew she had changes to make.

Ahead of the season’s beginning, “I talked to every individual staff member, our ops, our trainer, our conditioning” about what shifts needed to take place for the Lady Vols to continue the winning trajectory the team established last season, Caldwell told reporters in Knoxville on Wednesday. “[I had] probably three pages of things that we knew we could alter, change, tweak — and we have really done that.”

“We’ve really become obsessed about getting better,” she added. Returning for a second season means a lot is “much more familiar: your scouting, not every team you play is brand new, you’re not having to do everything for the first time, but there’s a lot of different things that we want to grow upon and flat out change.”

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Those changes include practical aspects of playing the game, assistant coach Angel Rizor told The IX Basketball, like “rebounding, defending more … communication.” But the biggest change the Lady Vols’ coaching staff is seeing is literal: “We have a team now that fits our style of play,” Rizor said. “Last year we had a really good team, but it was kind of a team that we got. We loved them, and they were really good, but now this year we have a team that, like Kim has said, has been the first team in a while that fits her system really well.”

Fitting that system means hitting shots — over and over and over again. “If you look through our players, every last one of them probably can drop 20 points on any given person,” Rizor said while gesturing around the Thompson-Boiling Arena at Food City Center, the team’s home. “And I think testifies to [our] style of play, we sub in five people, we play a five-out type of system. So it’s a perfect fit.”

Rizor was among the coaches who came to Knoxville from Marshall with Caldwell, but three coaches — Lexie Barrier, Roman Turner, and Gabe Lazo — were newcomers to how things worked last season. As a result, they’ve grown right alongside the returning members of the team.

“We have a year under our belt to really understand exactly what this is, and what she’s looking for, and exactly the areas she needs us to pick up in and where to coach and how to coach better,” Barrier explained. As a result, “in practice this year, we’ve developed more of a voice in terms of just being where she needs us to be, because we understand her a little bit more and understand what we have a little bit more.”

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Growing together as a coaching staff has an impact on the roster of young players the coaches are guiding. “We’re all meshing together a lot better, and understanding each other,” Barrier added, “[and] the girls have been able to incorporate that better, too, because we’re all on the same page, and speaking the same language now.”

The Lady Vols entered the 2024-25 season unranked, untested. This year, the Associated Press has the team sitting high in the SEC at No. 8 overall. That could put added pressure on the team, staff, and Caldwell — but she doesn’t seem bothered. “We’re just kind of operating like we operated last year,” Caldwell told The IX Basketball directly. “We’re going to keep a chip on our shoulder, and we’re going to continue to try to prove people wrong.”

The Lady Vols will kick the season off with an Oct. 29 exhibition game at home against Columbus State. The team’s first regular-season game will be in Greensboro against NC State on Tuesday, Nov. 4.