Kim Caldwell is the culture builder Lady Vols basketball needs

Tennessee Athletics Director Danny White doesn't like to make the traditional home run hire, but more often than not, he has been successful in hiring coaches who find ways to win, no matter the school. At Buffalo, it was Nate Oats. At UCF, it was Josh Heupel. At Tennessee it has been Heupel and Tony Vitello.

Each of those coaches has a few things in common. They are hard-working culture-builders who prioritize building relationships with the players in the building and on the recruiting trail. We've already seen some success come from those traits with the baseball and football programs.

While White didn't hire Rick Barnes, he still brings those same traits and has done a great job building the men's basketball program. We don't know what the future will hold for new Lady Vols basketball coach Kim Caldwell, but she's off to a good start in her short time on Rocky Top.

On Tuesday, she had her introductory press conference and addressed the person everyone has been talking about since the hire — Pat Summitt. Some attention has been drawn to Caldwell's hiring because she doesn't come from the Summitt or Lady Vol family. She addressed that perfectly by saying she would never be Summitt but would aim to be someone she would be proud of.

One big question surrounding Caldwell's coaching is her high school recruiting. She signed exactly zero high school recruits in the 2024 cycle, which can be concerning on the surface. Part of that was because she worked the transfer portal hard to bring in talent with college basketball experience to help her turn around the Marshall program.

In that recruiting cycle, she brought in two transfers to Marshall, which helped her transform the Marshall program from an average Sun Belt team to the best team in the conference. Although she had two helpful additions through the portal, she came into Marshall and changed the culture.

That ultimately changed how they played on the court and flipped losses in 2023 into wins in 2024. In the season before Caldwell arrived at Marshall, the Thundering Herd went 17-14. In her first year, she was able to completely turn around the program and improve to a 26-7 record.

Caldwell knows the expectations are high at Tennessee regarding building a strong Lady Vols basketball program. She runs an aggressive defense that has a high forced turnover rate and a fast-paced, high-scoring offense.

She's won a National Championship at the Division II level and flipped a Division I program in one season. She's not proven at the SEC level, but she doesn't have to be to be a successful head coach. If Danny White is correct again, Caldwell will be just the coach the Lady Vols program needs.