Parkersburg South grad Kim Caldwell accepts job at Tennessee | News, Sports, Jobs

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Parkersburg South grad Kim Caldwell has accepted the top teaching place at Tennessee. (AP Picture)

Tennessee athletic director Danny White has moved rapidly and gone exterior the historic Woman Vols’ program in hiring Marshall coach Kim Caldwell as solely its fourth head coach within the NCAA period.

White introduced the hiring Sunday, inside a few hours of the ladies’s nationwide championship sport. It’s a sport the Woman Vols haven’t performed in since 2008 once they received their eighth and final nationwide title beneath Pat Summitt.

Caldwell can be launched at a information convention Tuesday, wrapping up a search that began April 1 when White fired Kellie Harper after 5 seasons at her alma mater and a 108-52 document. She changed Holly Warlick, promoted to interchange Summitt and fired after going 172-67 in seven seasons.

“From the start, our objective has been to discover a dynamic head coach who can restore our girls’s basketball program to nationwide prominence,” White mentioned in an announcement. “Kim Caldwell is the perfect particular person to guide us.”

Tennessee can pay Caldwell $750,000 in base pay a 12 months via March 2029 beneath the memorandum of understanding signed Sunday morning. The settlement features a clause for a pay increase earlier than Could 1 of any season she wins a nationwide championship.

Caldwell received the 2024 Maggie Dixon NCAA Division I Rookie Coach of the 12 months award for her work at Marshall, going 26-7 to earn this system’s second NCAA Match berth ever and first since 1997. She is 217-31 in eight seasons as a head coach.

She led her alma mater Glenville State to the 2022 Division II nationwide title and has earned seven NCAA Match berths. Caldwell received the Pat Summitt Trophy for the 2021-22 season because the WBCA’s NCAA Division II coach of the 12 months.

Caldwell mentioned in an announcement she was humbled to just accept this job at a historic program.

“I can’t assist however replicate on accepting the Pat Summitt Trophy three seasons in the past and be moved by the good accountability and alternative of now main and constructing upon the unbelievable Woman Vol custom she constructed,” Caldwell mentioned.

In her one season at Marshall, Caldwell went 17-1 in successful the Solar Belt Convention common season and event titles.

Marshall ranked within the prime 5 nationally in seven statistical classes. They led the nation in 3-pointers tried and third in 3s made per sport with greater than 10 per sport. The Herd ranked fourth nationally in averaging 85.3 factors a sport.

The Herd ranked second in forcing 24.2 turnovers per sport whereas setting a program document for many wins in a season. Marshall hadn’t received no less than 20 video games since 1990-91.

White mentioned Caldwell has a successful method with a “high-octane offense and stress protection” that produces outcomes.

“On this new period of faculty sports activities, it was very important that we discovered an revolutionary head coach with a powerful monitor document of successful titles,” White mentioned. “We’re desirous to return the Woman Vols to a championship stage, and we’re assured that Kim Caldwell is the coach who can lead us again to the highest.”

The native of Parkersburg, West Virginia, helped lead Glenville State to the 2011 Division II event as a participant. She began teaching as an assistant at Ohio Valley College later that 12 months, spent a season again at Glenville State adopted by three seasons as an assistant at Sacramento State.

Employed in 2016 as head coach, Caldwell led her alma mater to 6 Mountain East common season titles and 4 convention event titles. The four-time Mountain East coach of the 12 months was 191-24, together with 132-12 in league play. She went 35-1 and successful the 2022 nationwide title and 33-3 and falling within the nationwide semifinals in 2023.

This hiring caps White’s first high-profile teaching search at Tennessee since bringing soccer coach Josh Heupel from Central Florida solely days after White was employed as AD in 2021.

Whereas AD at Buffalo, White employed Bobby Hurley, now at Arizona State, and Nate Oats, whose Alabama Crimson Tide misplaced within the nationwide semifinals Saturday, as males’s basketball coaches. White additionally employed Felisha Legette-Jack to teach Buffalo’s girls’s program.

She went 199-115 with 4 NCAA Match berths earlier than being employed to teach her alma mater Syracuse in 2022.