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Tennessee Lady Vols hot board: Candidates to replace Holly Warlick

By Caleb Calhoun

LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 12: Head coach Nikki Caldwell of the UCLA Bruins reacts while taking on the Stanford Cardinal in the championship game of the 2011 Pacific Life Pac-10 Women's Basketball Tournament at Staples Center on March 12, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 12: Head coach Nikki Caldwell of the UCLA Bruins reacts while taking on the Stanford Cardinal in the championship game of the 2011 Pacific Life Pac-10 Women's Basketball Tournament at Staples Center on March 12, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images /

The Tennessee Lady Vols need a new head coach. Here are potential candidates and non-candidates for the women’s basketball Volunteers.

Holly Warlick is out after seven years as head coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols. She inherited a difficult situation, taking over for Pat Summitt a year after her dementia announcement. But Warlick could never live up to the expectations of the program the late Summitt built.

It’s a sad way to end the career of such a great Vol for Life. We must state that Holly Warlick did a lot of good for the university and the Tennessee Lady Vols. In fact, the program wouldn’t be where it was without her. She was its first great star, and she was an assistant on all eight national championship teams.

That being said, multiple top 5 recruiting classes shouldn’t produce a team that barely gets into the NCAA Tournament. So Phillip Fulmer made the right decision for the Tennessee Lady Vols. Now, it’s on to find a new coach.

So who should be on the board? Well, given the fact that Tennessee women’s basketball is such a brand, it should be a desirable job for anybody. You would think this program could start at the top and work its way down.

However, certain circumstances, including the drop-off of the program, the pressure to win there and the prospective pay all make this a less attractive job than it likely once was. Then there’s the brand of the Lady Volunteers that is still relevant.

Taking both into account, our coaching hot board of candidates for the program to hire is very specific. In fact, we’re breaking everything down into three sections: Eliminated, risky but on the board, and top candidates.

The first two sections will each have two separate slides. Eliminated ones will be those who aren’t coming and those UT shouldn’t hire. The risky ones are those who should be on the board but have drawbacks and those who are outside the box hires.

Finally, we’ll end with the top 10 candidates Fulmer should look for and break down everything they bring to the table. So let’s get started. This is our hot board analysis of whom the Tennessee Lady Vols should look at.