This fall, when the Tennessee women's basketball takes the court for its 2026-27 campaign, Avery Mills, a 5'9" guard from Lynchburg, Virginia, will be clad in orange for the first time. Mills is transferring from Liberty University, where she led her team in scoring with 15.3 points per game, along with four rebounds and 2.2 assists.
Mills will be joined by guard Naomi White, who is coming to Rocky Top from Northern Arizona. She, too, led her former team in scoring, averaging 20.8 points, good enough for 15th in the country and the title of Big Sky Freshman of the Year.
It is yet unclear who will join the two backcourt stars come November. As of this writing, Mills and White are the only two women’s basketball players on the Tennessee roster, thanks to a mass exodus following a disappointing 2025-26 season and first-round loss in the March Madness Tournament.
Opinion: Move the Grizzlies to Nashville? Tell us your thoughts
For a program in freefall and a head coach, Kim Caldwell, now forced to rebuild from scratch, Mills and White represent the first pieces of a hopeful bounce back and return to women’s hoop dominance.
More significantly, they're reflective of the upside of increased player movement – for Mills, White and others, but also for the struggling programs, like Tennessee, that need them.
If you ask five people about the current state of college athletics, you'll get five different responses, mostly likely predicated upon the respondent’s relationship to sports. A grizzled coach who’s been in the game 30 years and is used to recruiting and leading teams the late-nineties way will have a completely different perspective than, say, a 20-year-old All-American with a million Instagram followers.
One of the most glaring points of contention would, of course, be the transfer portal. It’s the vehicle by which student-athletes can (repeatedly) take their talents elsewhere, whether for more money or simply a better program fit. But it's also a source of consternation for coaches who lament having to recruit the athletes already on their roster, as well as those they hope to sign.
Opinion: Why college sports doesn't need a White House playbook
Indeed, what is (rightfully) seen as progress for the athletes on whose backs the entire multi-billion-dollar college sports industrial complex was constructed is dismissed as blasphemous by the coaches who’ve always been free to offer their services to the highest bidder. They've been playing a zero-sum game all along; never can there be two winners.
Except Tennessee women’s basketball tells a different story.
After a disastrous 2025-26 campaign, Caldwell actually has the opportunity to turn things around next season. Tennessee does play in what is arguably the most competitive conference in women’s basketball, and the way this season ended may have sullied the storied program’s image in the minds of players even beyond Caldwell’s reach. But still, there is hope.
It might be a long shot. Caldwell might be down two scores with less than 10 seconds left while the other team has the ball. But this is hoops, baby, and it ain’t over till it’s over.
ESPN reporter Holly Rowe laid the Lady Vols’ woes at the feet of Tennessee Athletic Director Danny White in a now-deleted social media post, but White is still in control of Volunteer Sports, and he has previously expressed his support for Caldwell. He’s also allowed her to move into this recruitment season with her title firmly in place, enabling her to sign Mills, White and others to come.
All of which is to say: There’s still time on the clock.
Caldwell can shake off the recruitment missteps, the curdling bad blood, the finger-pointing and distrust that ran rampant in her program. And she can take those steps without waiting until toxic personalities run out of eligibility while taking up valuable space on her bench, or spending two to three years developing a group of 18-year-olds who, while talented, just aren’t SEC-ready.
Caldwell can begin again, she can win again, and she can do it in months instead of years.
That’s not to say she will. There are no guarantees in the business of sports, and while other teams are regrouping and reloading, Caldwell still needs to prove that hockey-style substitutions can work at an elite level.
But one thing’s for certain: Without the transfer portal, Caldwell wouldn’t be able to try.
There’s still plenty of room within the Tennessee debacle for folks to place blame on the portal. After all, Caldwell wouldn’t have had to start from scratch if her entire roster hadn’t decided to leave.