{"id":724714,"date":"2026-05-03T15:54:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T15:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/724714\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T15:54:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T15:54:41","slug":"lady-vols-basketball-left-out-of-post-transfer-portal-top-25-rankings-by-the-athletic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/724714\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Vols Basketball Left Out of Post-Transfer Portal Top 25 Rankings by The Athletic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"lady<\/a>KNOXVILLE, TN \u2013 December 04, 2024 \u2013 The Tennessee Lady Volunteers flag during the SEC-ACC Women\u2019s Basketball Challenge game between the Florida State Seminoles and the Tennessee Lady Volunteers at Food City Center in Knoxville, TN. Photo By Kate Luffman\/Tennessee Athletics<\/p>\n

After a brutal end to year two under Kim Caldwell, Lady Vols basketball has a clean slate with an entirely new roster, with the goal of getting back on track. However, after transfer portal movement has mostly been completed, Tennessee is still on the outside looking in of The Athletic\u2019s top 25<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the rankings, The Athletic has South Carolina as the No. 1 team in the country. It is followed by No. 2 UConn, No. 3 USC, No. 4 Michigan and No. 5 Notre Dame. In total, seven SEC teams made the cut. Along with the Gamecocks, this includes No. 6 LSU, No. 8 Vanderbilt, No. 13 Texas, No. 17 Oklahoma, No. 19 Kentucky and No. 20 Ole Miss.<\/p>\n

As far as outgoing Lady Vols transfers on the list, Deniya Prawl\u2019s Louisville team is at No. 7 and Talaysia Cooper and Jaida Civil\u2019s Rebels are at No. 20. Alyssa Latham and Lauren Hurst\u2019s Virginia Tech, Kaniya Boyd\u2019s Texas A&M and Mia and Mya Pauldo\u2019s Rutgers are not listed.<\/p>\n

More From RTI:\u00a0Transfer Portal Superlatives for Lady Vols Basketball\u2019s 2026 Incoming Class<\/a><\/p>\n

Caldwell brings in 15 new players this season, 13 of which coming from the portal and a pair as high school signees. This came after all eight potential returns left for the portal, and five-star high school signee Oliviyah Edwards was released per her request and later signed with South Carolina.<\/p>\n

It was a different approach to building the team this offseason for Caldwell, as well. Instead of telling targets what Tennessee can do for them, she wanted to know what they can do for UT.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of different things that you learned throughout,\u201d Caldwell said. \u201cI think one thing is we were almost trying to scare people away with telling them how hard we were going to work, of this is how hard this is going to be. You have to really want to do this. I think it gets really easy to start to try to out-recruit people and sell, sell. We can do this for you. Tennessee can do this for you. It\u2019s an amazing brand. We kind of went the exact opposite this way, and say, \u2018No, you are here to help Tennessee. This is how hard it\u2019s going to be. You have to believe in yourself enough to do it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, with the roster completed, the Lady Vols will begin integrating the entirely new team into Caldwell\u2019s system. Helping with the change are a pair of new assistant coaches, Bill Ferrara and Isoken Uzamere, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KNOXVILLE, TN \u2013 December 04, 2024 \u2013 The Tennessee Lady Volunteers flag during the SEC-ACC Women\u2019s Basketball Challenge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,32705,23209,32706,32707],"class_list":{"0":"post-724714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-basketball","7":"tag-basketball","8":"tag-kim-caldwell","9":"tag-lady-vols","10":"tag-lady-vols-basketball","11":"tag-tennessee-lady-vols"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116511458187178961","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}