Tennessee women’s basketball is one of the most storied programs in the sport, the house that the late, great coaching legend Pat Summitt built and one of the marquee destinations for any coach.
The job opened up on Monday after the school parted ways with Kellie Harper after five seasons.
Tennessee is immediately the top coaching job open in all of college women’s basketball, and it will have no shortage of interested parties.
While there are plenty of names out there who would likely be intrigued by this job, we’ve looked at five possible candidates who would make a ton of sense for the Volunteers. Let’s see who they are and why they’d make sense for Tennessee.
Kara Lawson (Duke)
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If Tennessee wants to bring back one of its better players from the Summitt era, Lawson is probably at the top of the list. The former WNBA player-turned-coach sparked a revival at Duke and led her team to the Sweet 16 this past season. She’s a rising star in the coaching ranks who has clear ties to the best era of Tennessee women’s basketball and would be an excellent hire. We’re wondering if she’s at the top of the school’s list for possible candidates.
Our Mitchell Northam thinks there might be mutual interest.
Jolette Law (Asst. Coach, South Carolina)
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Law worked as an assistant coach at Tennessee for Holly Warlick from 2012-17, and she’s been a key member of Dawn Staley’s staff at South Carolina since 2017. South Carolina has been the standard for college women’s basketball for some time now, so it’d make a lot of sense for Tennessee to look to the SEC powerhouse and bring back a coach it knows well. Law’s time as a head coach at Illinois from 2007-12 only willed two WNIT appearances, but she’s had more than a decade to prove she’s more than deserving of a second chance with a big program.
Cori Close (UCLA)
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Close has won a lot of games (287–140) while at UCLA in her 13 seasons with the Bruins, and she’d bring a ton of experience to the sideline for a program that may value that in a next hire. You look at how well Rick Barnes has done on the men’s side, and Close feels like she could possibly be the counter to that on the women’s side. Money probably won’t be an object for Tennessee on a hire, and Close would be a marquee hire, especially with her tournament success.
She might be able to push further at Tennessee in March than she has at UCLA, particularly with the school about to make the jump to the Big 10.
Yolett McPhee-McCuin (Ole Miss)
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After five seasons at Jacksonville, McPhee-McCuin rebuilt the Ole Miss women’s basketball program into one of the more consistent factors in the SEC. She made it to the Sweet 16 with her team in 2023 and has made the tournament outright each year since 2022. If Tennessee wants to make one of its conference rivals weaker and its program stronger, McPhee-McCuin would be a smart hire.
Lindy La Rocque (UNLV)
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La Rocque’s UNLV teams have dominated since she arrived in 2020, as she’s won 82.3-percent of all games played in the past four seasons. The former Stanford player coached at her alma mater from 2017-20, but she worked at Belmont in Nashville as an assistant from 2015-17. Returning to Tennessee with more resources and better ability to recruit for a major program could boost La Rocque’s ability to win in the tournament, where her teams have been eliminated in the first round over the last three seasons. She would be a fascinating fit for a program that needs to win more.
