Sports

Ole Miss Basketball Coach Laughs Off Blowby Handshake As Kim Caldwell Loses Respect

#NCAA Women's Basketball
by
Kim Caldwell / Tennessee Vols

© Saul Young/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images


The Tennessee women’s basketball team lost its fifth game in seven tries on Tuesday to SEC rival Ole Miss. Many around the program are growing irritated with head coach Kim Caldwell.

A disrespectful blowby of Yolett McPhee-McCuin during postgame handshakes only added to the frustrations of fans, though the Rebels coach didn’t seem to take issue.

“I think she was probably just really ready to go,” McPhee-McCuin said after the game. “I like Kim. I don’t ever take stuff like that personally because of the emotions. We’re competitive.

“She’s at Tennessee, and there’s a lot of history behind that place. Maybe she was in a rush, or maybe she was upset.”

Most watching along believed it was the latter.

Kim Caldwell is losing respect.

Tennessee is a place with a lot of pride when it comes to women’s college basketball. The fanbase expects to win.

Legendary coach Pat Summitt built an incredible brand throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. The Lady Vols won eight national titles and made 18 Final Fours under her leadership. That success has been difficult to replicate.

Kim Caldwell was hired ahead of the 2024-25 campaign to provide a spark. She succeeded in doing so in Year 1 with a 24-win season that ended in the Sweet 16. The highlight of the campaign was an upset of eventual national champ UCONN.

Year 2 has been a bit more difficult.

The Vols are a respectable 16-8. They will make the NCAA Tournament once again. Unfortunately, they’ve been largely uncompetitive in the games that matter.

It’s not every outcome. Tennessee boasts close losses to Top 10 teams NC State and Texas, as well as wins over ranked foes in Kentucky and Alabama.

The blowouts, however, are adding up. They’re starting to cast a dark cloud over the season as a whole. They are listed below:

22-point loss to (3) UCLA
24-point loss to (16) Louisville
30-point loss to (1) UCONN
43-point loss to (3) South Carolina
13-point loss to (17) Ole Miss

Can the Vols compete for a national title? These results don’t instill much confidence.

The head coach’s actions are annoying the fanbase.

Kim Caldwell’s blowby handshake with Yolett McPhee-McCuin is just the latest incident to frustrate Vol Nation. Many spoke negatively of her comments in a recent press conference at South Carolina.

After losing badly to the Gamecocks, she called her team out. She said it has no fight. It will give up when the going gets tough.

Some didn’t appreciate the public shaming of players. She was equally critical of effort following a loss to UCONN.

“When you take plays off, they make you pay for every play off. A lot of what we did was self-inflicted… We take bad shots, we don’t share the ball, we don’t play within our offense.”

And after a loss to Louisville…

“It kind of melted and it kind of spread, and then we could never recover. And then it turns into a 24-point loss – and had there been 10 more minutes, it would have probably been a 50-point loss.”

Kim Caldwell hasn’t been shy to call her team’s poor play and effort out. It’s a motivational tactic, as she alluded to before the Ole Miss loss.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked for this group.

While some have called for her job, the results do not fall solely on the coach. Caldwell lost senior leadership from last year’s team. Freshmen have been asked to fill those voids.

Still, with the embarrassing losses piling up at a prideful program like Tennessee, it is difficult for fans to stay quiet. The efforts to spark a turnaround have proven unsuccessful. Her postgame antics are beginning to annoy.