- Kim Caldwell on Lady Vols-UConn rivalry: ‘It’s one of the coolest rivalries in sports.’
- Tennessee upset UConn last season. Then Geno Auriemma’s Huskies won 32 straight, and counting.
- Rivalry renews with UConn ranked No. 1, and Tennessee trying to climb its way back to elite.
If Kim Caldwell allows herself to press pause on the present and put aside her thoughts about Tennessee’s latest women’s basketball practice, she can take a walk down memory lane.
In this memory she’s tapping into, she’s a kid in school, growing up in West Virginia. Her classmates are discussing Kobe and Shaq and Allen Iverson. Then, for one week each winter, the conversation shifted.
They’d debate women’s basketball.
Tennessee vs. UConn.
Pat vs. Geno.
In Caldwell’s memory, it’s not just the girls in her school bantering about this rivalry.
“It’s the football players and the boys basketball players — it’s everyone. That’s the topic of conversation,” said Caldwell, 37, the second-year Lady Vols coach. “It was really the only time we talked about women’s sports like that — and, we talked about it just like it was men’s sports. It was the coolest thing. It would take over your whole, entire week.”
When No. 1 UConn hosts the No. 15 Lady Vols on Feb. 1, the rivalry won’t carry the weight it did at its zenith.
That’s partly a testament to what this rivalry helped achieve. It galvanized women’s basketball. The sport blossomed, just as Pat Summitt hoped it would. This enterprise is about much more than Tennessee vs. UConn now.
Also, the Lady Vols slipped this past decade. There’s no getting around that, and there’s no mistaking Caldwell’s mission toward restoring Tennessee to a higher plane.
There’s also no denying the nostalgia this series evokes.
“Even if I wasn’t the head coach of Tennessee, it’s one of the coolest rivalries in sports,” Caldwell told USA TODAY, two days before a game that’ll be nationally televised on Fox. “I know it’s kind of fallen off as of late, but it is a big deal. It does matter.”
Geno Auriemma’s Huskies ‘will be chomping at the bit.’
Caldwell is the current answer to a trivia question: Who’s the last coach to beat Geno Auriemma?
Improbably, incredibly, Tennessee upset UConn, 80-76, last January. Caldwell coached that game just 17 days after giving birth to her son.
Up to that point last season, Tennessee had lost several games against good teams by narrow margins, and in the immediate aftermath of the upset, Caldwell just felt grateful her team had found a way to finish a signature win.
“It was such a close game. I was, honestly, just waiting for us to blow it. And, we won it,” Caldwell says. “In that moment, as a coach, it’s like, we won a big game, and we won a close game.”
Months later, when Caldwell bumped into Lady Vols fans in the offseason after Tennessee’s Sweet 16 finish, it hit home just how big that upset of UConn was for a fan base that last tasted victory against its bitter rival in 2007.
Thanks for beating Connecticut, one Lady Vols fan would tell Caldwell in the offseason.
That Connecticut game was great, another would say.
The rivalry’s diminished. It’s not dead.
“It may not carry the same weight now as (some other games), but it’s still a good memory in people’s minds,” Auriemma told reporters recently.
UConn’s last loss to Tennessee notwithstanding, the 12-time national champion Auriemma remains women’s basketball’s super boss.
His Huskies, led by the incomparable Sarah Strong and the sweet-shooting Azzi Fudd, are defending national champions, winners of 32 straight, and the team laying waste to everyone. Each of UConn’s past 17 victories have come by more than 25 points.
“They’re going to be chomping at the bit, waiting for us,” Caldwell said, “They might be one of the best teams in basketball history, and here we are, we’ve got to go to their place.”
Kim Caldwell proved she belonged in Year 1 at Tennessee
What’s the moment you realize you’re coaching the bluest of women’s basketball blue bloods, and not Division II anymore?
For Caldwell, the pyrotechnics machines hit home. They didn’t have those at Division II Glenville State.
“When you’re Division II, they don’t turn the lights off and shoot fire before the game,” Caldwell said. “They don’t even have videoboards. They have scoreboards, on the side of the walls. There’s bleachers.”
Coaching Tennessee, “You just have this moment of, ‘Oh, we are entertainment. This is a big deal.’”
Tennessee never ventured outside the Summitt tree before hiring Caldwell. The mantle passed from Summitt to Holly Warlick, her former player turned longtime lieutenant, and then to Kellie Harper, another former player.
When the program stagnated under Harper, Tennessee athletic director Danny White didn’t just go outside the box to replace her. He smashed the box.
He hired Caldwell, fresh off her lone season coaching Marshall.
“I find myself in surreal situations. You coach against Dawn Staley, and you coach against Geno Auriemma,” Caldwell said of her debut season at Tennessee. “One year (prior to that), you’re watching these coaches on TV, and you don’t even think it’s in the realm of possibility that you would be in the same room with them, unless I bought tickets to the Final Four and sat in the nosebleed.”
Less than two years removed from coaching Division II, she was shaking Auriemma’s hand in the pregame, before becoming the answer to that trivia question.
Now, she’s trying to accelerate Tennessee, which last reached the Elite Eight 10 years ago.
“I’m not going to be happy repeating what we did Year 1,” said Caldwell, whose team is 14-4 after a loss to Mississippi State. “I know that that’s not the standard for this job.”
She’s signed five-star prospect Oliviyah Edwards as part of her latest recruiting class, a possible bellwether for the program’s future. As for its present? Caldwell is left to address how her team that had won six straight SEC games looked so flat in a loss to Mississippi State.
“We just have to grow up,” she said.
Future of Tennessee vs UConn women’s basketball rivalry
This rivalry’s future is unclear. It renewed in 2020 after a 13-year hiatus. This will be the sixth meeting in the past seven seasons.
No game between these two teams has been announced for next season. As Caldwell views it, the door isn’t closed on the series continuing in some capacity.
Asked about the rivalry’s place going forward, Caldwell reflects on two moments. In 2024, at the Champions Classic in New York, Auriemma spoke of how Caldwell and her generation of coaches will become women’s basketball’s torchbearers.
“Us older coaches are on the way out. It’s going to be her job to carry it and continue to grow the game.,” Caldwell remembers Auriemma saying.
“Those words, I will never forget them,’ she added.
She also recalls a conversation with Candace Parker. The Tennessee legend made sure to remind the Lady Vols coach, “Tennessee plays anyone, anytime, anywhere.” Summitt lived that belief.
So, what’s the future of this rivalry?
“I don’t know if you have to do it every year,” Caldwell said, “but you have to keep it alive.”
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.