It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Kim Caldwell and the Tennessee Vols.

After a tough loss in Brooklyn to Louisville just before Christmas, the Lady Vols went on a seven-game winning streak.

The good vibes from that winning streak, however, quickly disappeared thanks to a home loss to Mississippi State and blowout losses on the road to UConn and South Carolina.

After the loss to South Carolina this past weekend, Caldwell told reporters that her team had a “lot of quit”.

“A lot of quit in us tonight,” said Caldwell. “And that’s been something consistent with our team, is we’re not comfortable when things don’t go our way. And I have a team that just quit on you, and you can’t do that in big games. You can’t do that anywhere in the SEC, but you certainly can’t do that at a program like this.”

Kim Caldwell is facing a pivotal week in her career

The Lady Vols will be back in action on Thursday night against Missouri.

Former Lady Vols guard and head coach Kellie Harper is in her first season as the head coach at Missouri. Thursday night will be her first time back in Knoxville (as a coach) since getting replaced by Caldwell in 2024.

If the Lady Vols lose to Harper — a three-time NCAA champion as a player at Tennessee — in Knoxville on Thursday night, the noise is going to get incredibly loud for Caldwell. And her seat will start getting warm.

“It’s a challenging week for Caldwell and for her team,” said VolQuest’s Brent Hubbs Tuesday on WNML’s SportsTalk. “Embarrassing on what happened on Sunday — [that] should never happen in this program. I don’t care how good South Carolina is. Tennessee did not compete in the second half. They did not play with any cohesion in the second half. Kim Caldwell was obviously very frustrated and upset. She said that very publicly, which is an interesting play.

“How does your team respond to that? How do you rally your locker room after you call your team out publicly the way she did? It’s been a challenging couple of weeks, but it hit a boiling point on Sunday afternoon. Both for Kim Caldwell personally, and how she addressed it in the post game, and how her team played on the floor. And you’re getting ready to find out a lot about where her culture is and where things are right now with her. She’s got an interesting week on her hands in terms of getting her team past Sunday, and everything that Sunday brought, and circling the wagons and trying to get her team ready to play on Thursday against Missouri and then Texas coming in on Sunday. So really trying times. Really interesting times. We’ll see how Kim Caldwell, who’s never been through anything like this before with a team, how does she manage this team? How does this team respond to her this week?”

As Hubbs noted, this is the first time Caldwell, who previously coached at Marshall and Glenville State, has ever gone through anything like this with a team — especially at this level. For that reason, I think you’ve got to give her some grace — no one is going to nail it the first time they go through something like this. She’s undoubtedly going to grow as a coach because of this adversity.

But at the same time, Tennessee isn’t a program where the women’s basketball coach should be learning on the job. This is a historic program with high expectations. And losing to South Carolina by 43 points shows that this program is nowhere close to reaching those high expectations.

Caldwell is going to get a chance to turn this thing around, but she needs to make it happen quick. If things continue to fall apart like they have the last two weeks, it’s very possible that she won’t get a third season on Rocky Top.

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