Tennessee women’s basketball coach Kim Caldwell has been in the position a little over three months and has secured seven recruits – five from the transfer portal who will play this season and two guards in the high school class of 2025.
The new players from the portal on campus this summer are: Rapuluchi “Favor” Ayodele, 6-1 senior forward from Pitt; Alyssa Latham, 6-1 sophomore forward from Syracuse; Lazaria Spearman, 6-4 junior forward from Miami; Samara Spencer, 5-7 senior guard from Arkansas; and Ruby Whitehorn, 5-11 junior guard from Clemson.
The two newcomers, who can sign scholarship papers in November and play at Tennessee starting in the 2025-26 season, are a first for the Lady Vols as Mia and Mya Pauldo are twins. The 5-5 point guards are from Paterson, New Jersey, and play for Morris Catholic High School and AAU program HUrban LEGENDS of JERSEY. Mia Pauldo is ranked No. 13 in the Class of 2025, while Mya is ranked No. 49, so both are top 50 recruits in the country.
All seven players fit the style that Caldwell wants to play – fast, aggressive on defense and attacking on offense.
Tennessee Athletics posted a video of Caldwell this week that marked her first 100 days on the job. It can be viewed below.
Workouts are limited in the summer by NCAA rules to several hours a week of court sessions and strength and conditioning. Full practice doesn’t get underway until late September, so the back-to-back-to-back-to-back sessions of two and three hours are yet to come.
Caldwell wants a fast pace and will rotate players in and out to maintain it and disrupt an opponent. The focus this summer is getting in top shape and adjusting to a fast pace in practice, including getting a shot within seven shots.
The video below shows clips of a practice session with Caldwell wearing a mic, and it’s well worth a listen. She isn’t going to tolerate any lack of hustle or effort.
“Our overarching philosophy is we’re going to prepare for our opponent,” Caldwell said in an interview with this writer. “We’re going to be ready for what they do. We’re going to practice what we’re going to do versus them, but we’re going to make them adjust to us. And we’re going to try to enforce our will on them.
“We’re going to know what their press breakers are. We’re going to know what their defense is, if we’re going to see a zone, we’re going to see a man. We’re going to be very prepared for the game. To the average eye, it may look like we do the same thing every game. To the people that are in the practice and doing the scouts and picking up different patterns, there’s going to be a scout specific to how we’re going to guard this person, how we’re going to press this game, what we’re going to do here and there based off each opponent.
“But it’s going to look the same almost every night.”
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CHAMIQUE HOLDSCLAW: One of the greatest Tennessee athletes ever has earned another hall of fame induction. Chamique Holdsclaw, the all-time leading scorer and rebounder in Tennessee basketball history – women and men – with 3,025 points and 1,295 boards, will be inducted into the Washington D.C. Sports Hall of Fame this Sunday, July 21, at Nationals Park.
The ceremony will take place at 12:30 p.m. prior to the Major League Baseball game between the Washington Nationals and Cincinnati Reds.
Chamique Holdsclaw glides to the basket. (UT Athletics)
Holdsclaw, who makes her home in New York, led Tennessee to three national titles in 1996, 1997 and 1998. She was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1999 WNBA Draft and spent the first six of her 11 pro seasons with the Washington Mystics. She earned WNBA Rookie of the Year honors and claimed five of her six WNBA All-Star awards while playing for the Mystics. During that time, Holdsclaw led the WNBA in scoring in 2002 and rebounding in 2002 and 2003 and averaged 18.3 points and nine rebounds per game.
She was inducted into the NYC Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015 and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and the University of Tennessee Athletics Hall of Fame in 2018.
Which raises a big question: Why has Holdsclaw not been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame? It’s a tremendous omission that needs to be rectified.
Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press.