What Tennessee Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell said Thursday on The Mike Keith Show

What Tennessee Lady Vols basketball coach Kim Caldwell said Thursday afternoon during her appearance on The Mike Keith Show:

If it’s easier entering Year 2 at Tennessee

“I will say, it’s a little more comfortable. You have familiar faces. You know people, you’ve met some of your fans. Not every room you walk into is brand new. You have leaders on your team that know the standard that are returning. So, it’s just a little more comfortable.”

Being comfortable making the Tennessee job easier

“They make your overall life easier. Your overall day-to-day easier. You’re not just constantly worried when you walk into a room, have I met these people before? Am I about to introduce myself to somebody that I met two days ago? People here are so nice so you have friends, you have familiar faces.”

If she’s just able to coach more in Year 2 at Tennessee

“Absolutely. And you know your calendar, so you know, alright, I’ll do this, I’ll do this, but then I get to go back and practie which is great. It’s the best part of the day.”

What she accomplished in year one at Tennessee that she doesn’t have to in year two

“I think just establishing the style of play was really big for us. Making sure the team understood the pace we were going to play at and how hard our practices were going to be and the amount of work that it took. We have a good group that is coming back that knows there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that knows that it is worth it and knows that the running and everything we do in the preseason will pay off down the road.”

Tennessee’s returners, new players having to learn more or unlearn more

“I think they probably have to unlearn and become more uncomfortable doing that. If they were told they can only do this, this and this on the floor, they maybe have to unlearn those restrictions that were put on them and have to learn how to be more aggressive. Have to learn how to play faster. Have to learn how to play multiple positions.”

What she makes most players unlearn

“Just play. Spacing, moving around. We did a really good job of recruiting and finding players that didn’t like to run a lot of long sets. That was something we went through last year is, okay, the play broke down, now you guys have to learn to read and react.”

Tennessee forward Zee Spearman

“She’s playing phenomenal right now. She’s playing her best basketball right now. She is a textbook example of what we try to show all of our transfers and even some of our high school kids, maybe you picked a school based on something other than the style of play. When you’re getting recruited at this level, everything is nice. All the gyms are nice. You have nutrionists, you get fed. You really need to look at the style of play. She did not look at that or maybe went to a place that didn’t fit her very well. Now that we’re playing her out, she’s a completely different player. Everyone has seen her confidence just grow, grow, grow and grow and I think this is going to be her breakout year.”

Spearman’s offseason experience playing for USA Basketball 3×3

“She had a great time. She learned a lot and I think the most important thing for her, a player like her, it was great for her confidence of just knowing she deserved to be there. To represent our country, but that she earned that right over so many great players.”

Kaiya Wynn’s return from injury, what she sees from her

“It was worse than a knee, it was an Achilles. So the worst injury you could possibly have, she went through, I saw her cry once. She cried the day it happened once she was trying to process it, then she was just a phenomenal teammate that entire year. She learned, she saw things through a different lens. Sometimes when you’re in the thick of it, you don’t necessarily get to see how complacent you can be or how lazy you can get or how whiny you can be. She really got to see, oh, this is how we look when we act like this? She’s done a great job of just keeping everyone postive and making sure that people don’t take for granted the hard things. Because she sat there and watched people run, she sat there and watched people go through a two and a half practice just dying to be on the floor. There was many times that she would say, it’s a privilege to be out here and you don’t know that until it’s taken away. We can say that all we want, but young people won’t hear it. When they hear it from somebody who has been sidelined in a devastating way and has fought and fought and fought to come back, they really pay attention to it. She’s done such a good job of just playing through it. She didn’t play for almost a year so she was pretty bad when she came back and she didn’t blink. She was rusty and she didn’t blink and she just kept going and she just went to failure, went to failure, went to failure and she’s one of the toughest kids we have because of that.”

How she decides what each of Tennessee’s subsitution rotations look like

“It’s something that takes a lot of time, and that part I’ve said publicly a lot. It takes time, it takes time, figuring out your combinations takes a really long time. And it really depends on the team. I’ve had some teams where we have an athletic group and we have a shooting group. Most of the time, we try to keep them very balanced. Great point guard, great point guard. Great driver, driver. Big, big. Shooter, shooter. We try to keep them balanced. We do get a lot of notoriety for our substitutions, where we do sub five at a time a lot and we sub four at a time a lot. There’s also a lot of times where we’re sending two or three to the table. That’s something we’ve had to teach recruits. We are subbing a lot, we’re going to play a lot players, I’m always going to trust my team, it’s going to be a place you can come in and play right away. But also, if you can play through fatigue and you’re being productive, we’re also going to leave you on the floor. And so then that makes it even harder because it’s not always, alright, you just only play with these people, you have to learn how to play with everyone. There’s going to be times where you’re hot, we’re gonna leave you on the floor. If you’re our most productive or our top five as we call it, we’re going to leave you on the floor before the media, we’re going to leave you on the floor before halftime, we’re going to leave you on the floor before the quarter break. We’re going to let you play a little bit longer. That switches up game-by-game based off your productivity.”

Playing quarters and not halves in women’s basketball

“It helps. And I didn’t think it was going to. My first two years I think we played still in halves. I thought there was going to be too many breaks and everything we want to is about pace, pace, pace. So we don’t want the other team to have a break. But it allows us to have our best players on the floor longer because we can time those up and we know that the breaks are coming.”

How she decides who starts

“It dosn’t (matter) to me. You know you have young people who have outsiders… We do it based off productivity of the game before. 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. Now, as a coach, we’re always trying to win. So if we don’t have a point guard on the floor, somebody might get bumped. If we don’t have a post on the floor, we’re going to change it real quick.. We’re going to change our formula a little bit on those regards. If it’s a tie, we go to offensive rebounds and who had the most of those. It’s very numbers based. I love that I don’t have to pick. I’m not picking this. This is not opinion. This is math.”

Players who are better off the bench, if that can out-weigh the numbers for starters

“We do think about that and those are conversations we have. That’s really knowing your team. You have some players that don’t like to start and you say, hey, you’ve earned a starting spot, but do you want to start today? And they say, no, I like coming off the bench. They like to be that six-man. And females like to do what they’re good at. That’s really easy and those are conversations that you just know your team and you have to have those conversations.”

Kaiya Wynn being a good six-man for Tennessee

“When you just go in and you get to see the game happening a little bit. You get to see the pace. You get to see some tendencies before you get on the floor. There are definitely some players, usually younger players, that like to operate that way.”

Mia and Mya Pauldo getting used to changes, maybe not starting

“We’re going to throw you in, then we’re gonna have conversations as we get to our scrimmage. We’re not really going to talk about starters in October. As we get closer to our actual exhibition games, then we’ll have these conversations of this is what we do and this is why we do it. When you coach a team, they all talk. They know. They know we are known for our subbing but we are also known for our different starting lineups. None of this is a surprise to anyone. 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. 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.”

How she gets top recruits to buy into that

“I think that what we have done throughout everything is we’re going to do everything we can to win. That’s what this is about. We have a lot great things at Tennessee, we have a lot of things we can offer you with name, image, likeness and we can develop you to be a pro. But people are choosing Tennessee because they want to win as a national championship. If we go into people’s homes and they list off a couple things but they don’t say I want to compete for a national championship, it’s probably not a great place for you to go. We’re going to work so hard, we’re going to put you through so much that if you don’t come out of it for a great season, then what do you do it all for?

Signing the class she did in her first year at Tennessee

“I’m so appreciative to last year’s team. Without last year’s team and we don’t make it to the Sweet 16, it’s a little bit harder to recruit. We did have five freshmen signed before we really played many games. You know that there’s negative recruiting going on. Saying, she hasn’t done it, she hasn’t done it, she hasn’t done it. We’re recruiting against coaches that have been to Final Fours, won national championships. I will always be thankful to those first five freshmen that believed in me. Saw the vision and wanted to be a part of it. Of hey, I see what she’s doing and I want to be the class that helps her do it. That’s a selfless thing to do. That’s a risk. That’s not them making a choice that’s about them, that’s saying, hey, I want to get Tennessee back to where they were. I believe in her. I believe in the coaching staff. I believe in what they’re doing and we want to help them do that.”

Current Tennessee freshmen helping next year’s

“They’re doing a great job. They want to play with great players. The twins last year did a great job because they committed first, did a great job recruiting the rest of that class. They all know each other at this level, they all are very open and honest. That’s how we are on our visits and that’s how we want our players to be of, yeah, we work really hard, yeah, we do things differently, but it’s a fun way to play, you’re not going to get put in a box, you’re going to be able to have a lot of freedom. You’re going to get better and those are conversations that we ask them to have.”

Her incoming transfer class of Nya Robertson, Janiah Barker, Jersey Wolfenbarger

“They’re gonna help right away. We recruit freshmen that are ready to play right away, and the spots that we missed, we try to fill out of the portal. That’s our whole mindset. We’re going to do that year after year. We’re gonna go after the best-fitting freshmen for us, and then we’re gonna go elsewhere, and that’s exactly what we did. We didn’t get a super tall player, and we’re never going to over-recruit a freshman that we signed, so we have some older post players that are in. Then we have to try to replace them. We have Nya Robertson that is a seasoned one-two combo that can play multiple positions. They are ready to step on and play right away but our freshmen have done a great job, too. There’s really not much separation.”

Convincing transfers they can shoot the three

“Couple of them. And then some of them, we’re having to say mmm, maybe not that one.”

If everyone has a green light from three

“Some are a little greener than others. Some are a yellowish green.”

If the Final Four is the floor, players saying that

“It makes me think that we’re motivated in the right way. It also makes me think that we have a lot of teaching to do of what it takes to get there… It takes a while. You have to go through the hard and see some success. Then you start to figure out that the hard was worth it.”