With Kim Caldwell atop the program, there are a lot of unique quirks about Lady Vols basketball. The two that grab the most attention from outsiders are how she rotates subs in and the different starting lineups she uses on a nightly basis. While she’s explained that the starters are decided on prior production, Caldwell hadn’t dove into the exact reasoning for the choices before.
During her appearance on ‘The Mike Keith Show‘, Caldwell gave the answer. It’s not just who she or an assistant coach felt did the best. It’s a literal formula they use to decide it.
It is simply adding up a player’s points, assists, rebounds and steals in a game, then subtracting turnovers from the total. The five with the highest number are typically the five to open the game next time out.
“We do it based off productivity of the game before,” Caldwell said. “Points, assists, rebounds, plus your steals, minus your turnovers. Whoever has the highest number of that the game before earns the right to start. That usually works out to be your best players. Your best players get to start. But every now and then, you’ll have somebody who had a great game that earns the right to start. Maybe they only start one game, but they’ve earned that moment. So they get that moment to run out. And if you had a bad game, guess what, you don’t get to start.”
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There are some situations where this isn’t followed exactly, though. If the result of the top five doesn’t feature a point guard or big, then Caldwell said she’s not afraid to plug one in at the expense of someone else.
However, at the end of the day, she’s not really concerned who is starting the games. Particularly with how often the team rotates in players and how quickly into the game the first substitution is made, it really doesn’t matter besides getting your name called on the loudspeaker.
To Caldwell, she’s much more focused on who the final five on the floor are, anyway.
“If somebody is concerned about starting, I don’t really want to start them… If you’re worried about you and the moment of starting a game and not worried about winning, then you’re focused on the wrong thing,” Caldwell said. “You should worry about finishing a game. You should be mad as a player, in my opinion, if it’s a close game and your coach doesn’t trust you to be on the floor because she doesn’t think you are good enough.”
The Lady Vols will start their season on Nov. 4 in Greensboro against NC State. While the initial rankings aren’t out yet, the expectation is it will be a top-10 clash between a pair of teams vying to reach the Final Four. The first public action Tennessee will be in is against Columbus State at home on Oct. 29, though. It is an exhibition and will not count toward either team’s record.
