KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell knows what is on the line this season, coming off a tough year that ended with eight straight losses, the departure of all her players, and critics calling for her job.
In an interview with ESPN, Caldwell said she did a "bad job" coaching the Lady Vols last year and strayed too far from the principles that brought her championships and success at previous Division II stops Glenville State and Marshall.
"It's without a doubt the worst year of my coaching career," Caldwell said this week. "I was harder on myself than anyone else could have been. I was more unhappy than anyone else with the result."
Now, with her new 15-player team in its second week of offseason workouts, Caldwell believes she has assembled a roster that has the ability to play the way the Vols did in her first season as coach, when they advanced to the Sweet 16 and she earned a contract extension through the 2029-30 season.
If they don't?
"I feel like if we have another year like last year, then yeah, that's it," Caldwell said. "We have to put a better product on the floor. We have to play hard. We have to look the way I want my team to look. That is more so what I am concerned about and focused on."
Tennessee athletic director Danny White said, "I feel as confident as the day I hired her, that she can win a national championship here, and we saw a bunch of glimpses of how that can work in Year 1.
"By our standard, we had a bad year. It's something I don't think we'll repeat. But sometimes in leadership, having the humility to know you maybe didn't make the right decision here or there, and having the fortitude to go fix it is really challenging. A lot of people struggle with that, and she didn't. She handled it and addressed the things that needed to be addressed."
Caldwell said those outside the program may have viewed Year 1 as a success because of the Sweet 16 berth, but she did not. Tennessee went 24-10 and finished 8-8 in SEC play, more losses than Caldwell had in one season in her entire career.
"Because of the way I am wired, Year 1 was not a success, and no part of me thought it was a success," she said. "I wasn't patting myself on the back. I was ending that season thinking I need to change a lot of things, because losing like this is not acceptable."
As a result, she shifted philosophies and her own up-tempo, pressing scheme to try and win a national title.
"It didn't have to be that deep of a change, in my opinion," she said. "You ignorantly try to swing for the fences and go to a Final Four in Year 2 by changing a lot of things, and that wasn't successful."
Tennessee started out 6-0 in SEC play, but the losses started to pile up during a tough February. By the time the season ended, Tennessee had finished 16-14, with eight straight losses to end the year -- including a first-round NCAA tournament exit. As players started to leave, many outside the program questioned the direction of the program and criticized White for not making a change.
"I don't allow emotion to impact how I make decisions, and obviously I knew the challenges that we had, and I also knew Kim had every intention of fixing them," White said. "I know there's nobody that wants to win for Tennessee women's basketball more than Kim."
Caldwell said there were "no surprises" with the roster turnover and understood that the 16-14 final record and loss to NC State in the NCAA tournament first round created a negative narrative around the program.
But Caldwell said she viewed what happened as a learning experience, and an opportunity to return to the principles she used early in her career. She revamped her coaching staff and went into the transfer portal to find players with a "chip on their shoulder mentality" just like her, in addition to veteran leaders and well-established 3-point shooters.
At their first team meeting a few weeks ago, she told players, "I'm going to be as hard on you and make it as hard on you as I have any other team in the history of my career."
"They have shown me that they will not break. They will not quit. They will not walk out," Caldwell said.
No games have been played yet, but Caldwell said she feels good about where things are headed going into a crucial Year 3.
"I'm not in a job where I can learn the same mistake twice," Caldwell said. "I want to be able to stay here and continue to grow. You learn way more from failure than you do success, and I hope I can be living proof of that."