MARTIN, Tenn. — Few coaches in the country are as candid as UT Martin head women’s basketball coach Kevin McMillan. He’ll usually be up-front about what’s working — and what isn’t — with his team and his program.

With the Skyhawks scuffling a bit after five consecutive losing seasons, albeit with an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2024, McMillan said there was plenty of self-reflection.

“The standards for our program have dropped, and that’s my fault, because I’ve allowed it,” McMillan said. “The expectations in our program have always been extremely high, and since COVID, the world has kind of relaxed things, and I kind of bought into that.”

After the introduction to the transfer portal, McMillan said he wanted to continue building his program the way he knew how, with a long-term 2-to-3-year window in mind. After all, that method had led the Skyhawks to four straight trips to the NCAA Tournament from 2011 to 2014.

But the landscape now is way different from what it was then. And McMillan knows that.

“That model’s out the window,” McMillan said. “Honestly, for the last two or three years, I’ve been fighting, saying ‘no, I can do it this way.’ Well, I can, but I can’t if they’re not here. So, the biggest realization now is we’re basically a one-year model.”

Last season, McMillan says the big goal was re-implementing a heavy off-court focus on culture, which he says was a great start, but the team lacked toughness and competitiveness.

This season, the Skyhawks bring in 13 newcomers while returning just 2 players who saw the court last season, including one starter, Sidni Middleton.

“This is going to be kind of a guinea pig year for me to figure out what I need to do to get these kids to understand and learn and grow in one year, and the truth is, I’ve never done it, so this is going to be new for me,” McMillan said. “But I can’t change what I do, I just got to try to push a little bit differently.”

As for what he emphasized on the recruiting trail?

“From the groups that we’ve got, the talking about the three things that we said, competing, toughness, and being a good teammate,” McMillan said. “As simple as it sounds, I don’t know that we were hammering that home the last few years, because we hammered it home starting this spring, and so all the kids are here have kind of the same mindset, which hopefully is going to translate, but that was kind of the biggest reason that they said that what resonated with them was those things, and so if that’s the case, then we’re at least one step ahead that we’ve already got kids that believe in that stuff.”

McMillan said the entire Skyhawk team will be back on campus starting Monday. Their first bit of scheduling news also dropped recently, with it being announced the team will compete in the 2026 Emerald Coast Classic, a four-team field in Niceville, Florida, that includes UT Martin, Virginia Tech, Michigan State and Alcorn State.