Former Lady Vol, Kara Lawson, leads Duke to ACC Tournament Championship Win!

[SGMVols]

Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous that she flipped like that over being kicked off BOT.

It was the right thing. Would’ve been a major conflict of interest for her to stay while coaching somewhere else.

 

[SGMVols]

Also, even with an ACCT title I still don’t trust Duke not to lose early in the dance because they have a random day where they only score 43 points.

 

[Voltopia]

She burned her bridges at UT before this. UT would not allow her to remain on the board of trustees when she became the Duke head coach and absolutely napalmed relationships behind the scenes with the campus side when that happened. I don’t believe the administration would have allowed her to have been interviewed if she had been interested last year.

This. Coaches are PR figureheads and ambassadors for the university. Further, they are given resources and attention to amplify their voice in the public square. What university is going to hire and amplify anyone who purposefully tried to create public problems for them?

 

[madtownvol]

Again….its easy to tell the real reason why Lady Vol fans rarely support and always down Kara’s accomplishments!

They were quick as hell to compare her to Kellie and almost guarantee that it was a bad hire with Kara’s lack of college coaching, yet…..here we are! 🩵

When the LV HC coaching position opened, I hoped it would go to Kara. I felt that she had the intelligence, charisma, international coaching experience, and high profile rep (as a WNBA all-star, Olympian and ESPN commentator) to really connect with recruits. She could hire assistants to bring some D1 coaching experience to the staff (just like CKC did).

However, I never saw anything but unverified rumors that Kara wanted the job or was in the consideration set.

Knowing that Kara's dad wanted her to go to a higher status school like Standford or Duke, I am not sure that coaching at Tennessee would have been her dream job, a it was for Kellie. I do think that Duke might be.

I am not downing Kara's accomplishments. She has done very well in recruiting. Winning the ACC title is a feather in her cap. However, Duke has a pretty hallowed history and the litmus test for Kara will be getting Duke back to the F4, as in the Gail G. years. Kara is in her 5th year so we are getting to the point where the next jump needs to happen. That was the standard Kellie was held to as well.

Kellie and Kara's five year records are pretty comparable. Kellie had an overall win % of 67% versus 70% for Kara but Kellie had a better in conference record 68% to 63%. These comparison are a little skewed because Duke suspended their season after 4 games in Kara's first season due to Covid (20-21)

 

[volfanstuckinga]

I remember when "fans" on THIS SITE told me "she's not experienced enough" when we hired KHJ over her. I thought the international 3 on 3 experience and her time in Boston COMBINED with her relevance due to ESPN made her a great choice. Looks like MAYBE I knew what i was talking about. Nothing against our current coach....I think she is going to be a success....but had we hired Kara......we may be much closer to the upper echelon.

 

[DeerPark12]

Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous that she flipped like that over being kicked off BOT.

It was the right thing. Would’ve been a major conflict of interest for her to stay while coaching somewhere else.

Not only a conflict of interest, but it's specifically banned by the BOT's governing documents for that reason. No full-time employee of a university outside of the UT system may be an active member of the BOT. Then she lobbed some shots at UT's diversity efforts when they were one of her areas of interest while she served.

 

[KnoxLikeUs]

I don’t know how this makes sense. Tennessee beat UConn earning a Top 5 win, ranked in AP Top 20 as high as #11, has an incoming top #1/#2 High School Recruiting class, 20 win season including conference and non-conference wins over several tourney teams under Coach Caldwell in year 1. Duke winning a ACC championship is good for that program it needed to win something during this tenure but nothing to even consider questioning the hire of Coach Caldwell at UT. This can’t be serious. UT is the upper echelon. Tennessee is coming up in the conversation in every SEC game on National TV.

I remember when "fans" on THIS SITE told me "she's not experienced enough" when we hired KHJ over her. I thought the international 3 on 3 experience and her time in Boston COMBINED with her relevance due to ESPN made her a great choice. Looks like MAYBE I knew what i was talking about. Nothing against our current coach....I think she is going to be a success....but had we hired Kara......we may be much closer to the upper echelon.

 

[LadyVol1908]

I want the absolute best coaches at Tennessee. I don't care about skin color. It's a business, and the one doing the hiring should do as any business should do. Look for and hire the "Best & Brightest". Regardless. Any other criterion can/will result in failure. For Kara to call out UT's Diversity is disingenuous. Conredge Holloway comes to mind. Wade Houston comes to mind. Kara is smarter than that, and as a big fan, I'm sorry She went that route...

Well she didn’t lie. She stated specifically that there were no African American coaches in the major sports at UT. There wasn’t. She never said that there’s NEVER been an African American coach at UT.

This all happened in 2020 and these were the coaches at the time. Could be totally wrong and went too fast.

Men's Sports:
- Football: Jeremy Pruitt (Caucasian)
- Basketball: Rick Barnes (Caucasian)
- Baseball: Tony Vitello (Caucasian)
- Tennis: Chris Woodruff (Caucasian)
- Swimming & Diving: Matt Kredich (Caucasian)
- Track & Field/Cross Country: Beth Alford-Sullivan (Caucasian)
- Golf: Brennan Webb (Caucasian)

Women's Sports:
- Basketball: Kellie Harper (Caucasian)
- Volleyball: Eve Rackham Watt (Caucasian)
- Softball: Karen Weekly (Caucasian)
- Soccer: Brian Pensky (Caucasian)
- Tennis: Alison Ojeda (Hispanic)
- Swimming & Diving: Matt Kredich
- Golf: Judi Pavon (Caucasian)
- Rowing: Lisa Glenn (Caucasian)

I know people don’t like to “see color” but that’s just not the reality of the world we live in. Kara just acknowledged, the vast amount of athletes you all root for are African American, and are coached by Caucasian individuals. It’s crazy that she was lambasted for simply making an observation!

 

[LadyVol1908]

Coach Kim Caldwell is the coach at UT, and I won’t be congratulating any others.

Fantastic, should’ve skipped right over this thread then! 🩵

 

[madtownvol]

Just a thought. Maybe a thread congratulating LVFL Kara Lawson on winning on the ACC title as Duke HC does not have to become a culture war battle over racial biases in coaching hires. These are actually distinguishable topics.

[And yes, Kara did call into question UT's head coach hiring practices but those statements were debated ad nauseam when they were made. ]

 

[DeerPark12]

I remember when "fans" on THIS SITE told me "she's not experienced enough" when we hired KHJ over her. I thought the international 3 on 3 experience and her time in Boston COMBINED with her relevance due to ESPN made her a great choice. Looks like MAYBE I knew what i was talking about. Nothing against our current coach....I think she is going to be a success....but had we hired Kara......we may be much closer to the upper echelon.

When Kellie Harper was hired, Kara Lawson had not yet gone to the Boston Celtics. She would not join Boston until fall of 2019, Kellie Harper was hired at Tennessee in April 2019. Her only coaching experience at that point was with a three on three team. She had never coached five on five basketball at any level. To that point, she had never expressed interest in coaching. I do believe she was interested in the Tennessee job anyway, but whether you or anyone else could project the future or not, it would not have been a popular move with fans to hire someone that had never coached in any level to take over a program that was teetering on the edge of a cliff.

I am happy for her as a person for having success in the career she has now chosen. But I think it is far from certain to say that the program would be in the same or better shape than it is right now if she had been hired instead of Kellie Harper. I think we too often talk about Kellie Harper‘s tenure as if it was a total failure, when she advanced to the second round of the NCAAs every year and made two Sweet 16s. Is that good enough at Tennessee? Of course not. But it’s the kind of record that gets a coach a raise and an extension in most places, so to cast it aside and say someone who had never coached college basketball before would automatically be better is just not correct.

 

[LV renaissance]

Start? This is her 5th yr, same as Kellie Harper had. Fortunately for Kara, Duke is more patient. Happy for Kara and Kyra, but still not convinced about either as offensive coaches.

Kara needs to kind of be careful about the stilted speechifying, it's becoming a self parody. Folks were predicting a post game Gettysburg Address before the game was even over. Not sure how kids relate to this, my guess is they giggle about it when its finally over. Kara goes to this well alot.

The trajectory for Kara and Kellie was going in the opposite directions. I like Kellie, so this isn't intended to be a knock on her, just a fact. It is much easier to be patient when you know there is an upgrade in talent each year and that your team is slowly but surely getting more competitive. Even if we do not make it to the sweet 16 this year, I will feel much better about the future with talented returning players, a great recruiting class coming in, and likely some top-notch transfers. That is not how it felt at all at this point last year. Kara has that same momentum at Duke that we now have here. It feels good even if every step isn't a linear success.

 

[LV renaissance]

Well she didn’t lie. She stated specifically that there were no African American coaches in the major sports at UT. There wasn’t. She never said that there’s NEVER been an African American coach at UT.

This all happened in 2020 and these were the coaches at the time. Could be totally wrong and went too fast.

Men's Sports:
- Football: Jeremy Pruitt (Caucasian)
- Basketball: Rick Barnes (Caucasian)
- Baseball: Tony Vitello (Caucasian)
- Tennis: Chris Woodruff (Caucasian)
- Swimming & Diving: Matt Kredich (Caucasian)
- Track & Field/Cross Country: Beth Alford-Sullivan (Caucasian)
- Golf: Brennan Webb (Caucasian)

Women's Sports:
- Basketball: Kellie Harper (Caucasian)
- Volleyball: Eve Rackham Watt (Caucasian)
- Softball: Karen Weekly (Caucasian)
- Soccer: Brian Pensky (Caucasian)
- Tennis: Alison Ojeda (Hispanic)
- Swimming & Diving: Matt Kredich
- Golf: Judi Pavon (Caucasian)
- Rowing: Lisa Glenn (Caucasian)

I know people don’t like to “see color” but that’s just not the reality of the world we live in. Kara just acknowledged, the vast amount of athletes you all root for are African American, and are coached by Caucasian individuals. It’s crazy that she was lambasted for simply making an observation!

There were never any good black candidates for any of these coaching positions, so it would have been racism for them to hire one. Seriously, my niece worked for UT's diversity outreach program, and they were seriously limited about what they could do by the state legislature. My niece got out of there rather than staying handcuffed.

 

[JohnWardForever]

Well she didn’t lie. She stated specifically that there were no African American coaches in the major sports at UT. There wasn’t. She never said that there’s NEVER been an African American coach at UT.

This all happened in 2020 and these were the coaches at the time. Could be totally wrong and went too fast.

Men's Sports:
- Football: Jeremy Pruitt (Caucasian)
- Basketball: Rick Barnes (Caucasian)
- Baseball: Tony Vitello (Caucasian)
- Tennis: Chris Woodruff (Caucasian)
- Swimming & Diving: Matt Kredich (Caucasian)
- Track & Field/Cross Country: Beth Alford-Sullivan (Caucasian)
- Golf: Brennan Webb (Caucasian)

Women's Sports:
- Basketball: Kellie Harper (Caucasian)
- Volleyball: Eve Rackham Watt (Caucasian)
- Softball: Karen Weekly (Caucasian)
- Soccer: Brian Pensky (Caucasian)
- Tennis: Alison Ojeda (Hispanic)
- Swimming & Diving: Matt Kredich
- Golf: Judi Pavon (Caucasian)
- Rowing: Lisa Glenn (Caucasian)

I know people don’t like to “see color” but that’s just not the reality of the world we live in. Kara just acknowledged, the vast amount of athletes you all root for are African American, and are coached by Caucasian individuals. It’s crazy that she was lambasted for simply making an observation!

I long for the day when we will all just be called AMERICANS. And as far as diversity is concerned, if you are that good, nobody will keep you from the job you deserve. I would also add that just because you excel at a sport doesn't mean you can coach others in that sport. Being a top athlete requires special skills, and being a top notch Coach also requires special skills, but those skills do not conflate.

 

[lvocd]

And as far as diversity is concerned, if you are that good, nobody will keep you from the job you deserve.

This is how to say "I am a caucasian male" without actually writing "I am a caucasian male."

 

[leeeda97]

It took Gail G (Duke), Wes Moore(NC State) and Dawn Staley (USC) 7 seasons to win their 1st conference championship. Kim Mulkey did it and a Natty in 5 yrs.

I'd say that Lawson is on the path to being a great coach. Some people just can't separate their feelings from reality around here.

A few months ago, I posted asking someone to show me a P4 coach, who recruits well without a lot of NIL. Only Rooster (a non vol fan) came up with Lawson about 1-2 months after I originally posted. Until very recently (Thanksgiving2025 Vegas tourney changes things), Duke's NIL budget was between 5 and 10 times less than top P4 teams. Just for comparison.....just one of UT's incoming recruits is receiving 30% more than Lawson"s whole NIL budget for last year.
.
While her other experiences certainly give her a unique perspective and even an advantage, nothing, but time and hard work can help you build the relationships needed to be success in wbb. What she has done in 5 years is pretty remarkable to me.

I look forward to Duke and UT reviving their rivalry and hope both teams continue to climb the ladder.

 

[LasVegasBill23]

who knows what kara will do down the line but happy to congratulate her on acc championship

 

[volsagain]

It took Gail G (Duke), Wes Moore(NC State) and Dawn Staley (USC) 7 seasons to win their 1st conference championship. Kim Mulkey did it and a Natty in 5 yrs.

I'd say that Lawson is on the path to being a great coach. Some people just can't separate their feelings from reality around here.

A few months ago, I posted asking someone to show me a P4 coach, who recruits well without a lot of NIL. Only Rooster (a non vol fan) came up with Lawson about 1-2 months after I originally posted. Until very recently (Thanksgiving2025 Vegas tourney changes things), Duke's NIL budget was between 5 and 10 times less than top P4 teams. Just for comparison.....just one of UT's incoming recruits is receiving 30% more than Lawson"s whole NIL budget for last year.
.
While her other experiences certainly give her a unique perspective and even an advantage, nothing, but time and hard work can help you build the relationships needed to be success in wbb. What she has done in 5 years is pretty remarkable to me.

I look forward to Duke and UT reviving their rivalry and hope both teams continue to climb the ladder.

NIL no one knows what any teams NIL amount is. Revenue sharing has been approved and what collective get for each player is not privy information that's shared. Everyone is just making guesses at what they think players are worth or receiving.

 

[leeeda97]

NIL no one knows what any teams NIL amount is. Revenue sharing has been approved and what collective get for each player is not privy information that's shared. Everyone is just making guesses at what they think players are worth or receiving.

You are welcome to take or leave anything I say, It is a message board after all, but there are people who know. People arrange the paperwork, people including parents like to talk, etc........

 

[volsagain]

You are welcome to take or leave anything I say, It is a message board after all, but there are people who know. People arrange the paperwork, people including parents like to talk, etc........

Yep options are just what they are. TV had to put out the fire that caused on the baseball team when we got the shortstop couple years ago. Caused distinction amongst the players. Unless it becomes public knowledge no one really knows except the players themselves. More than like their persuade to keep it confidential.

 

[JohnWardForever]

This is how to say "I am a caucasian male" without actually writing "I am a caucasian male."

And you offered nothing to my assessment, which is the truth. Greatness in sports gets noticed and rewarded these days.

 

[volfanstuckinga]

I don’t know how this makes sense. Tennessee beat UConn earning a Top 5 win, ranked in AP Top 20 as high as #11, has an incoming top #1/#2 High School Recruiting class, 20 win season including conference and non-conference wins over several tourney teams under Coach Caldwell in year 1. Duke winning a ACC championship is good for that program it needed to win something during this tenure but nothing to even consider questioning the hire of Coach Caldwell at UT. This can’t be serious. UT is the upper echelon. Tennessee is coming up in the conversation in every SEC game on National TV.

I was referring to when we hired the PREVIOUS coach over Kara. Not this last hiring process