Dan Fleser
For a preview of what new coach Kim Caldwell’s version of Tennessee women’s basketball might look like, I went to two sources.
One was the season statistics for Marshall University, where Caldwell coached this season before accepting the Lady Vols’ job. The other was the box score and account of the Thundering Herd’s 95-92 overtime victory over James Madison in the Sun Belt Tournament championship game.
The stats show that the Thundering Herd gathered a lot of steals and shot a lot of 3-pointers.
Their haul for steals totaled 435. The 13.2 per-game average accounted for more than half of the opposition’s average of 24.2 turnovers per game. Eleven players were in double figures and seven had at least 30 steals. Aarionna Redman averaged just 11.3 minutes per game. Yet she gathered 30 steals in 33 games.
The 3-point numbers were even more outsized. The Thundering Herd attempted 1,054 treys, about 45 percent of their overall field goal attempts (2,351). Ten players took aim and fired at least 37 total attempts. Four shot 144 or more, led by Abby Beeman’s 187. Overall, Marshall attempted more than twice as many 3-pointers as its opposition and shot 33.2 percent from long range.
Those tendencies were reflected in the victory over James Madison, which earned Marshall its first NCAA tournament berth since 1997. The game featured 12 ties and 14 lead changes.
James Madison committed 39 turnovers and more than half (20) were steals by Marshall. Seven players contributed at least one steal to that total. Forty-eight of Marshall’s points corresponded with those turnovers.
Conversely, the 3-point shooting nearly betrayed the Thundering Herd. Forty-six of their whopping 99 field goal attempts came from long range but they hit just eight in shooting 17.4 percent. They overcame the misfires were their total attempts, which raised their overall accuracy to 30 percent.
“We get beat by 30 or 40 if we don’t do that,” Caldwell said afterward. “That’s why we do what we do.”
Guard Bre Campbell played the entire five-minute overtime session, which was noteworthy only for Caldwell’s postgame comment: “Bre played all five minutes (of overtime) without a sub, which I don’t think I’ve ever done. I don’t think I’ve ever put a player in for that long.”
Caldwell’s substitutes players every few minutes, sometimes four or five at a time. Overall, eight Marshall players averaged 18 minutes or more per game for the season. Nobody topped 29 on average. In the James Madison game, Campbell and Beeman each logged 32 playing minutes while seven others reached double figures.
Caldwell distilled her coaching philosophy and style to being geared toward winning and celebrating championships like the Sun Belt. She tells her players at the start of the season: “Hate me now, love me later.”
“Every day I have a conversation with myself: it’s for them to have this moment,” she said. “You’re going to have to put them on the line (to run sprints). You’re going to have to yell at them. But it’s for them to have this moment.”
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Dan Fleser is a 1980 graduate of the University of Missouri, who has covered University of Tennessee athletics since 1988. He is a member of the Tennessee Sportswriters and the U.S. Basketball Writers Halls of Fame. He can be reached at danfleser3@gmail.com.