Kim Caldwell wants Tennessee to be ‘hardest-playing’ team

New Tennessee women’s basketball coach Kim Caldwell said she hopes for the Lady Vols to be the “hardest-playing” team in the country next season.

Caldwell addressed media Tuesday in a news conference in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her hiring was initially announced Sunday, the day of the women’s national championship game. Tennessee fired coach Kellie Harper, a Tennessee alum, on April 1.

Multiple big-name coaches were contacted by Tennessee about the job. Athletic director Danny White called the search — which lasted less than a week — “methodical.”

“We weren’t going to rush a decision,” White said. “We cast a very wide net and we talked to basically anybody you could think of — or connected to people who you could think of. Candidates at all different levels, all across the country. There was no stone unturned.

“The prerequisite for this search was something that I was unbending on — how is this person going to bring us back to the top?”

Caldwell might seem a curious choice considering she has coached just one season at the Division I level, guiding Marshall to a 26-7 record this past season. The Thundering Herd were 17-1 in the Sun Belt Conference, won the league tournament and played in the NCAA tournament’s first round. Before that, Caldwell coached at her alma mater, Glenville State in her native West Virginia, from 2016-23. She had a 191-24 record there and won the 2022 NCAA tournament Division II championship.