Last week, VolQuest’s Brent Hubbs said that fans shouldn’t expect a public announcement from Tennessee Vols athletic director Danny White about the status of Lady Vols head coach Kim Caldwell.

White gave Caldwell a public vote of confidence in early March following a brutal end to the regular season for the Lady Vols.

Still, there are some fans who are ready to move on from Caldwell after the Lady Vols were knocked out of the NCAA Tournament in the first round (UT finished with a 16-14 record).

Earlier this week, though, Caldwell hired Florida State’s Bill Ferrara as an assistant coach. That move essentially confirms that Caldwell will be back for a third season.

Lady Vols fans need to give Kim Caldwell a chance in 2026-27

We can debate White’s decision to retain Caldwell, but there isn’t any value in that. She’s coming back for a third season, whether you like White’s decision or not.

White is bringing Caldwell back because he believes she’s the answer for this program. Fans can disagree, and maybe they’ll be right. But for now, none of us — not White, Caldwell, media members, fans, etc — know how the 2026-27 season will go for the Lady Vols. We don’t even know what the roster will look like yet.

We’re in an era of college sports where rosters can be flipped overnight. Teams can go from a losing record one year to the best record in the sport the next.

Caldwell clearly didn’t have the right mix of players this season. For whatever reason, the roster just didn’t gel, and that led to poor play on the court.

Now, it’s important to remember that Caldwell has never faced failure before on this stage. In fact, she hasn’t really faced failure as a coach at all until this season. Growth, however, comes from failing. Caldwell will improve as a coach because of the adversity she faced this season. Whether she improves enough to get the Lady Vols back to being a national championship contender remains to be seen, but she’ll be better, in general, because of the failures she experienced this season (every coach or player in every sport has gone through adversity at some point in their career — Caldwell is just going through it on a larger stage than most).

The point here is that Lady Vols fans should be rooting for Caldwell’s success in 2026-27, and not for a coaching change. If it comes to that, then it comes to that. But if Caldwell is going to be the coach, then why not get behind her and the program 100 percent? If fans are just waiting for her to slip up, how is that productive for anyone?

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe Caldwell gets fired after next season. Or maybe the Lady Vols make a Final Four run next year. No one knows.

But what I do know is that if fans want the program to turn around, they need to surround it with positive energy — because negative energy has never made anyone play or coach better.

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