Lady Vols basketball is working hard on the recruiting trail. So far, Tennessee has landed nine transfers and signed two incoming freshmen to completely rebuild the roster for Kim Caldwell’s third season on Rocky Top.
As she assembles her roster, Caldwell sat down with Voice of the Vols Mike Keith on The Mike Keith Show to field some questions about the offseason.
Here’s what she said.
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On Janiah Barker, Zee Spearman being drafted to the WNBA
“It was always a goal for them, and they worked really hard to do that. And we’re incredibly proud of them. I’m going to continue to root for them every single step of the way. And I think it says a lot about the way that we play, that we got two of our bigs drafted in one year, and again, they put the work in, and I’m excited to see what they do next.”
On if she had a moment to sit down and put together a master plan for the transfer portal
“It’s always something that you’re thinking of. But no. Everything happens so quick, and that’s just what the transfer portal is. Is things happen fast. You make quick decisions, and you hit the ground running, and we’ve been pretty much running since the season has ended.”
On what she is looking for in transfers
“Having two years under your belt at this level. We are looking for, we didn’t have very many floor spacers —”
On what floor spacers means
“Shooters, the high percentage three-point shooters that are really hard to help off of. And so we really wanted to make sure that from the jump of the portal, we were getting those floor spacers out there. Your bigs and your point guards are harder to come by, and so we have been really trying to get key pieces there that fit that with what we the way we want to play. You got to be willing to play fast, you got to be willing to play hard. You got to be willing to come in and work and want to win for Tennessee. And those are conversations we’ve had openly and pretty upfront with every player we’ve brought in.”
On the personalities of incoming transfers
“With the portal, it’s like speed dating, is what you call it. You don’t have a lot of time. You do your background checks, you talk to them while they’re on their visit, a little bit coming up to it. But I think the one thing that every player that we’ve signed so far has in common is they have a chip on their shoulder. They maybe had a different route to get here, which very much mirrors me, different route, something to prove. And I think they’re all hungry to win.”
On Liberty transfer Avery Mills being the first commit
“I’ll back up a little bit further. I think one person that maybe gets overlooked in all of this is Gabby (Minus), our freshman who stayed. And she was unwavering. And then we get Avery, and Avery very much set the tone of how the season should look and the type of player we want. And she’s hungry, she definitely has a dog mentality and is not afraid of anything. And she knew this is what she wanted. She believed in herself enough. She believed in us enough to cancel the rest of her visits and just jump right in.”
On if there was a different way she approached the portal this year than last year
“I think there’s a lot of different things that you learned throughout. I think one thing is we were almost trying to scare people away with telling them how hard we were going to work, of this is how hard this is going to be. You have to really want to do this. I think it gets really easy to start to try to out-recruit people and sell, sell. We can do this for you. Tennessee can do this for you. It’s an amazing brand. We kind of went the exact opposite this way, and say, ‘No, you are here to help Tennessee. This is how hard it’s going to be. You have to believe in yourself enough to do it.'”
On international freshman signee Irene Oboavwoduo, how they found her
“She was sent to us. We got to watch her film. She came to campus. She was already over here doing some visits, and so we got her on campus. Great family, great kid, very confident in herself. I think she’s gonna be able to help us.”
On the basketball experience Oboavwoduo got in Great Britain
“Pretty good. She’s on their national team. She’s, I would say, a star over there. Everyone knows her. So we’re excited to get her.”
On what she’s looking for in the portal
“I think we still need some size, if we can get it. And we are looking for one more speedy girl with the ball in her hands.”
On hiring Bill Ferrara, Isoken Uzamere as assistants
“I think our offense was not the way we wanted it to look last year. It’s not the way it’s looked in a year in my career, and Coach Bill is a firm believer in playing fast. I think that he and I have battled throughout our careers of who can lead the nation in scoring, and so no better way than to just pair up and get on the same page and work together. And so he sees basketball through the same lens that I do, of playing in transition, playing fast, shooting a lot of threes in that regard. And then Coach Eas is a phenomenal human being, such a light to be around. A great recruiter can relate to all of our players, somebody that can sit here and talk your head off, which is very the opposite of me. So it’s been great at these visits. She’ll just put on a show and talk, and we can just listen, but she can relate to players really well, and she’s done a really good job just hitting the ground running for us.”
On why the offense didn’t work last year
“That is one thing that we could easily reflect on, is we wanted to play fast. We want to play in transition. We recruited to play fast. We recruited to play in transition, but then our half-court sets didn’t necessarily match the pace of our offense. And so just making sure that our entire system is married together, and that when we are running set, they’re still quick hitters, and they’re still working and creating space. And you have shooters that where, if once you have a gap, you can get to the rim, all of those things. But again, the main thing, we want to score in the first 12 seconds, we need to get back to that.”
